ALST/MUSE 219: Healing Arts: The Idea of Africa in Medicine and Museums (Spring 2025)

Explores the relationship between African arts, museums, and medicinal and public health systems. Students examine the role played by museums in crafting knowledge and perceptions of African arts through the use of and display of certain objects/subjects and the intersections of those understandings with concepts (and interpretations) of health. The over-arching goal of the course is for students to become critical readers of 'Africa', and the 'Idea' of Africa, in museums and in medicine, and through the use of material culture and ethnographic collections.