Course Catalogue

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This course introduces students to the world of museums and exhibitions, with particular attention to the crucial role that storytelling plays in collecting, archiving, cataloguing and exhibiting. Through close reading of postmodern novels, it then discusses how authors engage with these concepts as they fictionalise museums and collections or create imaginary archives and exhibitions. It involves hands-on sessions at the Hunterian collections.

10 x 2-hour seminar sessions. This is one of the Honours options in Comparative Literature and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus."

Available to all students fulfilling requirements for Honours entry into one of the SMLC Honours programmes, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes who qualify under the University's 25% regulation.

None

The standard assessments for this course are:

■ Blog entry on the history of an object in the museum (800 words) - 30%

■ Essay (2500 words) - 70%

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available:

■ There is no alternative to the essay and blog, but an extension to the deadline can be offered as reasonable adjustment (students should follow the usual process for extensions).

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor. 

This course aims to:   

■ Examine archiving, collecting, exhibiting as creative, political, and gendered practices that involve storytelling

■ Analyse how authors of fictional texts engage with archiving, collecting and exhibiting and their political and gender implications

■ Encourage students to recognise discourses in museum practices and in the analysis of literary texts 

■ Increase students' employability by strengthening their knowledge of cultural institutions, and by honing their skills in different types of writing (i.e. blogs, labels, essay)

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

■ Develop interdisciplinary approaches based on work in the Hunterian archive and research on literary texts  

■ Formulate evaluations of the ideological and sociological implications of storytelling in archiving, collecting and exhibiting and of how these issues are reflected in literary texts

■ Write in different genres (labels, blogs, visual narratives and commentaries, essay) and communicate findings in a form suitable to the target audience  

■ Identify and analyse questions such as gender, race and colonialism in museum practices and literary texts