Semester:
Fall
Offered:
2023
Professor: Alan Corbiere
M - 3:00pm to 5:45pm
The collections housed at the Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology, Harvard University, offer a stellar opportunity to investigate Indigenous diplomacy carried on throughout the Great Lakes and Northeast region during the colonial period (1600 – 1900). In this seminar, students will complete readings that address theoretical aspects of museology, such as materiality, orality, literacy, knowledge transfer, meaning-making, collecting, repatriating, and cultural revitalization. Each week readings will be assigned that thematically focus on various diplomatic items, delving into how those items were used historically, how they continue to be used, or in some cases, how they are being reincorporated into Indigenous lives. The readings will cover item descriptions, material composition, techniques, historic use, as well as object journeys. These readings have been selected because typological samples of such diplomatic items are housed at the PMEA-H collections. The seminar will offer tactile museological sessions at the museum, allowing students to work directly with various items from the collections. Throughout the seminar, students will explore how items such as pipes, wampum strings and belts, came to symbolize the treaty and the treaty relationship. Indigenous peoples regard and treat these items as records and documents – thus this seminar is designed to provide the students opportunity to increase their appreciation and understanding of that ontological and epistemological status.
M - 3:00pm to 5:45pm
The collections housed at the Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology, Harvard University, offer a stellar opportunity to investigate Indigenous diplomacy carried on throughout the Great Lakes and Northeast region during the colonial period (1600 – 1900). In this seminar, students will complete readings that address theoretical aspects of museology, such as materiality, orality, literacy, knowledge transfer, meaning-making, collecting, repatriating, and cultural revitalization. Each week readings will be assigned that thematically focus on various diplomatic items, delving into how those items were used historically, how they continue to be used, or in some cases, how they are being reincorporated into Indigenous lives. The readings will cover item descriptions, material composition, techniques, historic use, as well as object journeys. These readings have been selected because typological samples of such diplomatic items are housed at the PMEA-H collections. The seminar will offer tactile museological sessions at the museum, allowing students to work directly with various items from the collections. Throughout the seminar, students will explore how items such as pipes, wampum strings and belts, came to symbolize the treaty and the treaty relationship. Indigenous peoples regard and treat these items as records and documents – thus this seminar is designed to provide the students opportunity to increase their appreciation and understanding of that ontological and epistemological status.