AAAS 32.16 Curating and Telling Black American Life in U.S. History Museums: From Slavery to Black Futures
This course examines how museums and archives curate and tell stories about Black American life from slavery to the present, with the understanding that Black American history is U.S. history. We will explore how “Black American” has been defined and contested over time and how museums and other repositories in the United States emerged alongside and participated in “scientific” practices that classified, othered, and ranked humanity across time and space.
We will consider how curatorial choices shape which stories are highlighted, which are left out, and how these narratives are challenged and reshaped by artists, activists, advocates, and communities. Building on these ideas, we will also explore Black joy and suffering in museum exhibitions and collections, alongside how museums have addressed the challenges and responsibilities of exhibiting traumatic histories in public, especially for descendants and communities that remain connected to those pasts. How, then, do exhibitions respond to archival silences and frame what remains unseen or unrecorded?
Museums and archives are not neutral spaces, as the scholarship and case studies in this course demonstrate. As such, we will approach them as social texts: readable, curated environments shaped by people, institutions, and power that in turn shape how history is remembered and understood. Through site visits, close attention to curatorial practices (e.g., exhibition design, label writing, object selection, as well as engagement with curators, artists, and public historians), we will gain insight into how museums and archives shape public knowledge and memory, not only of Black American life, but of U.S. society more broadly. This course follows a lecture-discussion format, with multiple ways to participate as we move through the material together.