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This lecture introduces students to museum anthropology as a sub-discipline concerned with the history, politics,
and ethics of ethnographic collections in museological contexts. The aim of the lecture is to provide students with
an understanding of both the historical formation of this sub-discipline and the ethnographic museum itself.
Last update: Jindráková Karolína, Mgr. et Mgr. (09.04.2026)
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Please be aware that the first session on 2nd October will be held online and asynchronously. Details can be found on the Moodle course. The first in-person session will be held on 16th October, but you must watch/learn the contents on Moodle for 2nd October beforehand.
1) Introduction to the history of ethnographic museums
2) The early history of ethnographic museums
3) The Pitt Rivers Museum and its decolonization efforts
4) French anthropology and museums - The rise and fall of the Musee du L’homme
5) Primitivism and Ethnographic museums
6) Kiwahahine, the early beginnings of German museum anthropology, and the Völkerschauen
7) German colonialism, WW2, and the Benin Bronzes
8) The Weltmuseum Wien and the history of the imperial ambitions in the Habsburg Empire
9) Russian anthropology and the Kunstkamera
10) Working in the Museum Sector
The course involves formal lectures with the use of audio and visual materials. Students are expected to write an exam at the end, which will consist of questions to which they have to provide short written answers. To pass the course, students have to reach at least 51% of all points. Readings: Primary Reading: Penny, H. Glenn. In Humboldt's Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Additional reading:
Penny, H. Glenn. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002
Cvetkovski, Roland, and Alexis Hofmeister, editors. An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR. Central European University Press, 2014.
Hicks, Dan. 2020. The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Karp, Ivan, and Steven Lavine. 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Rydell, Robert W. 1987. All the world’s a fair: Visions of empire at American international expositions, 1876-1916. Paperback ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Last update: Jindráková Karolína, Mgr. et Mgr. (09.04.2026)
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