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1	Travelling objects : modernity and materiality in British Colonial travel literature about Africa Hållen, Nicklas January 2011 (has links) This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature. travel literature Africa modernity materiality material objects things commodity form commodity culture postcolonialism Homi Bhabha museums exhibitions colonialism geography space trade ethnography the book ambivalence subject-object relations fetishism John Speke Verney Cameron Henry Stanley Mary Kingsley Ewart Grogan Constance Larymore Mary Hall English language Engelska språket
2	Hidden histories and multiple meanings : the Richard Dennett collection at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter Ayres, Sara Craig January 2012 (has links) Ethnographic collections in western museums such as the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) carry many meanings, but by definition, they represent an intercultural encounter. This history of this encounter is often lost, overlooked, or obscured, and yet it has bearing on how the objects in the collection have been interpreted and understood. This thesis uncovers the hidden history of one particular collection in the RAMM and examines the multiple meanings that have been attributed to the objects in the collection over time. The Richard Dennett Collection was made in Africa in the years when European powers began to colonise the Congo basin. Richard Edward Dennett (1857-1921) worked as a trader in the Lower Congo between 1879 and 1902. The collection was accessioned by the RAMM in 1889. The research contextualises the collection by making a close analysis of primary source material which was produced by the collector and by his contemporaries, and includes publications, correspondence, photographs and illustrations which have been studied in museums and archives in Europe and North America. Dennett was personally involved with key events in the colonial history of this part of Africa but he also studied the indigenous BaKongo community, recording his observations about their political and material culture. As a result he became involved in the institutions of anthropology and folklore in Britain which were attempting to explain, classify and interpret such cultures. Through examining Dennett’s history this research has been able to explore the Congo context, the indigenous society, and those European institutions which collected and interpreted BaKongo collections. The research has added considerably to the museum’s knowledge about this collection and its collector, and the study responds to the practical imperative implicit in a Collaborative Doctoral Project, by proposing a small temporary exhibition in the RAMM to explore these histories and meanings. In making this proposal the research considers the current curatorial debate concerning responsible approaches to colonial collections, and assesses some of the strategies that are being employed in museums today. 069.0942356

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Travelling objects : modernity and materiality in British Colonial travel literature about Africa

Hidden histories and multiple meanings : the Richard Dennett collection at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter