B5166 - Museum Anthropology (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will learn tools and advanced methodological skills to critically analyze the main approaches to museum collections and patrimonialization processes. They will also be able to apply such skills in projects aimed at heritage valorization. They will employ an appropriate language to foster the public fruition of heritage.

Course contents

Please note that classes will begin on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.

 

Museums and Others’ Things

The first lessons of the course will retrace the salient phases of the history of collecting and of museums from the early modern period onward, paying particular attention to collections of extra-European artifacts, to the multiple modes of colonial appropriation that have often lain at the origin of such collections, to exhibition strategies and their relationship with dominant anthropological approaches, as well as to the forms of knowledge elicited by the interaction between artifacts and social actors within the Italian and European context.

A second part of the course will be devoted to analyzing the functions of the museum (conservation, cataloguing, research, exhibition, etc.) and the transformations that the anthropological museum has undergone in recent decades, as it is increasingly called upon to serve as a forum and an arena for intercultural dialogue.

Particular attention will be dedicated to the ever-growing demand for the decolonization of museum institutions, driven in part by the radical critiques advanced by social movements of global scope and resulting in phenomena such as the restitution of objects, shared curatorship, and other forms of interaction with the communities of origin of the artifacts, including in diasporic contexts.

The final part of the course will be devoted to investigating the problematic relationship between the ever-increasing emphasis on the intangible component of heritage – accompanied by the growing perception of historical collections as heavy colonial burdens – and recent developments in material culture studies, which have instead brought materiality back to the center of contemporary anthropological interest. Practices such as the study of the cultural biographies of things, of collections' provenance, the interdisciplinary analysis of the objects' material dimension, and new forms of knowledge-sharing will be explored with the aim of envisioning appropriate forms of "care" for museum collections and of providing students with useful tools for undertaking, on their own, the study of specific collections and museums.

Readings/Bibliography

All students, including non-attending ones, are required to read the following texts which will be discussed during the oral exam:

• Collection of articles and book chapters which composes the weekly syllabus (see below, “Teaching methods”). The collection will be uploaded in pdf format among the teaching materials of the course ("Virtuale") before the beginning of the lessons.
  
• Lattanzi, Vito, Musei e antropologia, Carocci, Roma, 2021.

Moreover,

Attending students must also choose ONE book from the following list:

Non-attending students must also choose TWO books from the following list:

• Clemente, Pietro e Emanuela Rossi, Il terzo principio della museografia. Antropologia, contadini, musei, Carocci, Roma, 1999.
• Grechi, Giulia, Decolonizzare il museo. Mostrazioni, pratiche artistiche, sguardi incarnati, Mimesis, Milano, 2021.
• Guermandi, Maria Pia, Decolonizzare il patrimonio. L'Europa, L'Italia e un passato che non passa, Castelvecchi, Roma, 2021.
• Guermandi, Maria Pia, Restituire. L'elefante nella stanza dei musei occidentali, Nomos Edizioni, Busto Arsizio, 2026.
• Karp, Ivan e Steven D. Lavine (a cura di), Culture in mostra. Poetiche e politiche dell’allestimento museale, CLUEB, Bologna, 1995.
  
• Paini, Anna e Matteo Aria, La densità delle cose. Oggetti ambasciatori tra Oceania e Europa, Pacini, Pisa, 2014.
• Tucci, Roberta, Le voci, le opere e le cose. La catalogazione dei beni culturali demoetnoantropologici, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, 2018. Scaricabile gratuitamente: http://www.iccd.beniculturali.it/getFile.php?id=6457
  
• Stocking, George, Gli oggetti e gli altri. Saggi sui musei e la cultura materiale, Ei Editori, Roma, 2000.

Teaching methods

Some lessons will be devoted to the collective discussion of some articles, uploaded among the teaching materials of the course.

Dates and texts to be read will be communicated at the beginning of the course.

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending.

The final oral exam is based on questions aimed to verify the student's knowledge of the themes discussed during frontal lessons (only for students that participated in classwork) as well as those treated in the program's texts. The questions will deal with general themes, and in his answer the student should show his capacity to go into specific details. Among the elements that concur in the final evaluation there are: detailed knowledge of the book's content, property of language, and especially the capacity of organizing the information – also deriving from different sources – into complex answers showing expositive and critical skills.

Proper language and the ability to critically speak about the books' content will lead to a good/excellent final grade

Acceptable language and the ability to resume the books' content will lead to a sufficient/fair grade.

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of the books' content will lead to a failure in passing the exam.

To sign up for the exam, please use the Almaesami website.

One exam session is scheduled each month of the year (excepting August).

Teaching tools

The frontal lessons will be supported by Power Point presentations that will be uploaded in the “Teaching materials” section of this website after each class.

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

Office hours

See the website of Davide Domenici