SHUM 4500 - Collecting Copies

(crosslisted) ARTH 4500 , CLASS 4500 , MUSIC 4336

Fall. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

A. Alexandridis.

This seminar investigates some of the university’s old and often neglected teaching collections. Focus is on those collections that consist of replicas (e.g. musical instruments, Rau plow collection, plaster cast collection, Blaschka glass models of invertebrates). We will explore the collection’s and their object’s multiple temporalities, materiality and correspondent multi-disciplinarity. What purpose do/did these copies serve within a given discipline? How are they made to translate a prototype? How did/does this “translation” affect the way the very prototype was understood by different disciplines? The seminar hopes to make these collections relevant again to students and the university alike.

For longer description and Fellows’ bios please visit www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/index.html.