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

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

Essay (2500 words) - 70%

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. Where, exceptionally, reassessment on Honours courses is required to satisfy professional/accreditation requirements, only the overall course grade achieved at the first attempt will contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

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

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.