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Full-Text Articles in Museum Studies
Communal Appropriation: Considerations Of Heritage And Cultural Preservation, Nikia Chaney
Communal Appropriation: Considerations Of Heritage And Cultural Preservation, Nikia Chaney
CGU Theses & Dissertations
While cultural appropriation is widely taken as a negative phenomenon that should be avoided, aspects of cultural appropriation are desirable for cultural preservation and heritage. These aspects can expand upon a museum's function by fostering an authentic connection to the community that would enhance the exhibition of cultural artifacts with authenticity, sustainability, diversity, and accessibility. This paper interprets auto-ethnographical visits to two sites, the Watts Tower Community Center in Los Angeles, CA, and the Fairfield House in Bath, England as a way of understanding community appropriation. Both the Watts Tower Community Center and the Fairfield House are inhabited by black …
The French Conundrum: The Unsettled Relationship Between The Colonial Past, Identity Construction, And Immigration In The Musée National De L’Histoire De L’Immigration, Sierra Ruby Newby-Smith
The French Conundrum: The Unsettled Relationship Between The Colonial Past, Identity Construction, And Immigration In The Musée National De L’Histoire De L’Immigration, Sierra Ruby Newby-Smith
CGU Theses & Dissertations
This paper focuses on the intersection of identity, the colonial past, and immigration in France through the lens of the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. The museum, which opened in 2007 and is currently redesigning its permanent exhibition, has struggled to come to terms with France’s colonial past, a defining aspect of the museum as a result of its location and theme. This paper argues that the museum functions as a microcosm of France’s difficulty to address its colonial past while still maintaining its current national identity construction. Thus, this paper explores how the Immigration Museum is and has …
The Pervert’S Guide To The Museum, Seth Ifor Alt
The Pervert’S Guide To The Museum, Seth Ifor Alt
CGU Theses & Dissertations
This dissertation provides a sustained theoretical articulation of core Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts situated within the standing difficulties in the practice and theory of museums. Drawing upon research gathered from site visits, informational interviews, textual analysis, and an extensive engagement with the seminars of Jacques Lacan, I enumerate here a first attempt at what a Lacanian theoretical formation can contribute to museum studies scholarship. Through this research this dissertation shows psychoanalysis to be especially useful for museum studies owing to how the troubles immediately encountered in the everyday material practices of museological work are structurally analogous to the impossibilities experienced on …
Making Memory, Making Meaning: Memorial Museums And The Participatory Audience, Hillary Kirkham
Making Memory, Making Meaning: Memorial Museums And The Participatory Audience, Hillary Kirkham
CGU Theses & Dissertations
This dissertation explores the relationship between memorial museums and visitors, reexamining the process of remembering traumatic events in United States history. My work examines this meaning-making dynamic in case studies of four memorial museums: The 9/11 Memorial Museum, The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, Manzanar National Historic Site, and Carthage Jail. By combining textual analysis of museums with data from visitor-produced materials such as guestbooks, letters, periodicals, and Instagram posts, I examine memorial museums' aims and rhetorical strategies while analyzing visitors' roles and contributions, illustrating how both guest and site collaborate to create memory and meaning. Drawing and …