Reed Gochberg

Useful Objects

Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Useful Objects examines the cultural history of nineteenth-century American museums through the eyes of writers, visitors, and collectors. Throughout this period, museums gradually transformed from encyclopedic cabinets to more specialized public institutions. These changes prompted wider debates about how museums determine what objects to select, preserve, and display-and who gets to decide. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials and accounts in fiction, guidebooks, and periodicals, Useful Objects shows how the challenges facing nineteenth-century museums continue to resonate in debates about their role in American culture today.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. September 2021
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 239mm x 159mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 544g
• ISBN-13: 9780197553480
• ISBN-10: 0197553486
• Artikelnr.: 61855174

Autorenporträt

Reed Gochberg is a Lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. Her research and teaching focus on American studies, museum studies, and material culture.

Inhaltsangabe

* Introduction
* 1. Circulating Objects: Loss and Decay in the American Philosophical
Society's Cabinet
* 2. Shadowed Silhouettes: Writing Indigenous Resistance in Early
American Museums
* 3. American Claimants: Overwhelming Collections and Visitor
Impressions at the British Museum
* 4. Novel Inventions: Nation and Spectacle in the U.S. Patent Office
Gallery
* 5. Specimen Collectors: Preservation and Classification at the
Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology
* Conclusion
* Notes
* Selected Bibliography
* Index