Highlights new ways of using objects for classroom, museum & public teaching settings. Exs.

What is it about?

This special issue showcases innovative and effective avenues for engaging students and publics in object-based learning. With classrooms increasingly relying on two-dimensional Powerpoint images and recent publications questioning the relationship between museums and objects (Conn, 2010, Do Museums Still Need Objects?), the ground for object-centered teaching seems to have eroded. Yet, even as some have questioned the relevance of objects in museum settings, the recent “material turn” in anthropology has shown that classrooms and exhibition spaces must engage more rigorously and inventively with the fact that humans interact via material things. This introduction to the special issue of Museum Anthropology spotlights an array of emergent visions regarding teaching with objects in and beyond the classroom. This special issue brings together scholars who have developed creative and innovative ways to integrate material worlds into (and sometimes beyond) their classrooms. Whether it is by having students produce auto-ethnographies of their possessions to foster insights into identity-crafting processes, manufacturing 3D scans of “antique” museum objects to revisit questions about replicas and models, requiring students to buy/sell objects in on-line auctions to spotlight the role of words and images in capitalist value-creation, having classes engage in urban museum collections projects, or via detailing new strategies for teaching museum anthropology as applied/engaged anthropology, all of the contributors offer insights into the role of materiality and object-centered teaching for a future generation of anthropology students.

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