Expository Writing (105-0-21)

Topic

Who Are Museums For?

Instructors

Alice Boone

Meeting Info

Technological Institute LG62: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Are you the kind of person who reads every textual explanation label in a museum? Are you a browser who waits for serendipitous discovery? Or a purist who wants a personal encounter with an object, artwork, or display unmediated by a museum's interpretative materials? Or maybe you avoid museums as boring spaces that are "not for you." And just who writes these texts anyway? As much as they are places for awestruck encounters with objects—be they historical, scientific, or artistic—museums are also contested spaces where insiders and audiences alike may understand the missions in different ways. In this class, we will explore how current writing in and about museums—in exhibitions, reviews, critiques, and open letters, among other media—reflects institutional reckonings with relevance, cultural restitution, and relationship-building in communities near and far. Along with these forms of public writing, we will read Lawrence Weschler's book Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, an extended meditation on truth and hoaxes in the wonderfully strange Museum of Jurassic Technology (a real place!), as a story about how museums are trying to contain cultural debates about whose perspectives shape the narratives in these spaces. Students will practice both informal and formal writing: discussion board posts, peer feedback on drafts, personal essay, textual analysis, and a research essay driven by student interests.

Class Materials (Required)

Although most texts and other media will be available on Canvas, students will need to purchase, rent, or access via course reserves:
1) Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein (2024). 6th Edition. They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN: 978-1324070030. Used and new books are equally fine as are print and e-books. This book ranges in price from about $15-$35, and can be found at the Norris Bookstore as well as from various online booksellers.
2) Weschler, Lawrence (1995). Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN: 978-0-679-76489-2. This book is available new or used, as well as in digital form. Because it's late in the quarter, it won't be available at Norris Bookstore, but there's a copy available in Course Reserves in the Main Library.