SCIENCE, COLLECTING and POWER

Erik Desmazières, “Library of Babel” (1997)

Professor James Delbourgo jdelbourgo@history.rutgers.edu 01:506:250:01 Spring Semester 2020 History Department Rutgers University Office Hours via Zoom/Webex, etc.: To be confirmed & by appointment Course Description Are you, someone in your family, or is someone you know a collector? Why do people collect? And what role does collecting play in science? Collections are everywhere: from museums to corporations, from zoological specimens to digital information, from human remains to archeological artifacts. But why do these collections exist and what purpose do they serve? Are they a source of knowledge and enlightenment or (also) relics of imperialism and tools of economic or social power?

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This class examines the relationship between collecting and various forms of science in particular. Some argue that collecting is a universal human pursuit, but collecting takes many forms. We trace its history from the ancient world to the present and explore the many different ways humans have made collections. Topics may include encyclopedic knowledge in pre-modern empires; the golden age of specimen-hunting that built the world’s great natural history museums in the nineteenth century; the collection of human artifacts and anatomical remains in the sciences of archaeology and anthropology; China’s rise to prominence as one of the 21st century’s great collecting powers. Key Questions What motivates us to collect? How do objects and specimens tell stories about contact between different peoples during the course of world history? How has collecting evolved over time? In what ways is collecting itself scientific? How has what counts as scientific changed over time in collecting? How have the technologies of collecting changed? How did religious concepts inspire the idea of assembling a complete collection or catalogue of everything in the natural world? How have archaeology and anthropology functioned as human sciences for collecting artifacts and biological remains? How have these sciences contributed to a range of contrasting ideas about human cultural and physical variation, from imperialism & scientific racism to evolution, cultural patrimony and heritage? How has the role of data and quantification developed in collecting? Are collections of animal specimens and human remains ethically justifiable or not? SAS CORE LEARNING GOALS 1. [HST] Explain the development of some aspect of a society or culture over time. The class explores the history of collecting and the way it has served both the pursuit of

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science and wider questions of authority, knowledge and power, involving both western and non-western societies. 2. [CCO] Analyze the relationship that science and technology have to a contemporary social issue. The class examines why we have large collections of various kinds of scientific specimens and information today, where and how they were collected, and explores the technical, political and moral arguments about their meaning and purpose and justifiability. The class can serve as an introductory course for the minor/certificate in STEM & Society. And it fulfills the Elective requirement for the Certificate in Public History. See: https://history.rutgers.edu/academics/public-history/certificate-in-public-history This class is for students of all backgrounds interested in the relation between STEM subjects and social issues. No pre-requisite or prior knowledge is required. Every effort will be made to accommodate the needs of students majoring in different fields and taking classes outside of their major. The class will be taught bearing in mind the wide variety of student backgrounds from sciences to humanities and beyond. ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT ASYNCHRONOUS REMOTE --- Equivalent of 2 lectures on PowerPoint slides with sound/narration by professor will be posted for you to listen to and view, take notes on and ask questions about per week PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A NEW COURSE, BEING TAUGHT FOR THE 1ST TIME AND SO IT IS POSSIBLE THERE WILL BE MINOR (NOT MAJOR) ADJUSTMENTS TO THESE ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES 20% for attendance: response emails and office hours chats --- you will be asked to write at least 1 email response per week to the professor, either commenting on asking questions about materials in the lectures; possibility of doing more for extra credit; the professor will read and respond to your messages

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--- you will also be expected to have 2-3 live office hours chats with the professor throughout the whole of the semester, depending on student numbers: we'll gauge how things are going and correct as needed --- students will be given additional opportunities as needed to discuss the material directly with the professor via zoom etc.; the professor will clearly outline for all students in podcasts what each assignment is about and how to write the assignment 10% 1st Short Paper: students will have a choice of short paper topics and be asked to write 3 pages on topics from the first few lecture/podcasts in the class 20%: Midterm Exam: A Short Take-Home Paper featuring two short essay-style questions on lectures and discussions that come after the 1st short paper 10%: 2nd Short Paper: students will have a choice of short paper topics and asked to write 2-3 pages on lectures that come after the midterm take-home 40%: Final Take-Home (not cumulative): a choice of essay questions based on the final topics in the class after the 2nd short paper GRADING SCALE A: 90 to 100 B+: 87 to 89 B: 80 to 86 C+: 77 to 79 C: 70 to 76 D: 60 to 69 F: 59 and below PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE PLEASE NOTE: THE SPECIFIC CONTENTS OF THIS SCHEDULE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE; THIS IS A NEW COURSE; THE OVERARCHING THEMES OF THE COURSE WILL STAY MOSTLY AS STATED BELOW

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INTRODUCTORY SECTION:

WHO DO PEOPLE COLLECT THINGS? Tues 19 January Welcome & Introduction Thurs 21 January Why do People Collect? What psychological motivations drive people to collect? Can these explain scientific collecting? Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking my Library: A Talk About Collecting” (1931), Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (Schocken, 1969), pp. 59-67 Tues 26 January Long Before Wikipedia Why did empires from Rome to the Middle East make encyclopedic collections? What explains the encyclopedic impulse: is it useful knowledge or out of date? Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John Healy (Penguin, 1991), short selection Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, 14th century, trans. Elias Muhanna (Penguin, 2016), short selection

PART TWO:

NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTING

Thurs 28 January Cabinets of Curiosities: Proto-Science or God's Tricks? How & why did cabinets of curiosities combine science, art, the strange and the occult? Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books, 1998), pp. 255-301 (incl. pictures) Tues 2 February Cabinets of Curiosities

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Why did David Wilson create a cabinet of curiosities in Los Angeles? What is curious about the things it contains: it is a joke, mystifying, spiritual or a chamber of horrors? "Inhaling the Spore: A Journey through the Museum of Jurassic Technology" (2004), 35 mins. video on the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles Thurs 4 February Religious Roots of Scientific Collecting How did ideas about God inspire the dream of collecting everything in the world? Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (Yale, 2000), ch. 1 selection & pictures Tues 9 February Darwin & the Victorians: Collecting and Evolution What role did collecting play in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection? Why were the Victorians so obsessed with collecting? Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (London, 1839), excerpt Duncan Porter, “The Beagle Collector and His Collections,” in David Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage (Princeton, 1985), pp. 973-1019: selection Thurs 11 February Plant-Hunters: Natural History & Empire How did Victorian plant-hunters interact with the people of Asia, America & beyond to get specimens? Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869), excerpt Tues 16 February From Eden to the Genome Why has collecting been seen as an inferior form of science in modern science? Is this justified? How does the Svalbard Seed Vault aim to save the world from agricultural catastrophe? Bruno Strasser, “Collecting Nature: Practices, Styles, and Narratives,” Osiris 27 (2012): 303-340

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M. R. O’Connor, Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 227-233 Thurs 18 February DEBATE: Zoology = Murder? Is Killing Animals to Collect Them Necessary for Science or Not? Ben Minteer et al., “Avoiding (Re)Extinction,” Science 344 (2014): 260-261; and The Fall of the Wild: Extinction, De-Extinction and the Ethics of Conservation (Columbia University Press, 2018), 15-37 L. A. Rocha et al., “Specimen Collection: An Essential Tool,” Science 344 (2014): 814-815 Kirk Johnson, “The Ornithologist the Internet Called a Murderer,” New York Times, 15 June 2018 1ST SHORT TAKE-HOME PAPER ON NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTING

PART THREE:

COLLECTING CULTURE -- ARCHAEOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGY Tues 23 February Who is the Archaeologist? What is the classic image of the archaeological explorer? What kind of scientists are archaeologists? Movie Clip: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982), directed by Steven Spielberg Jacques Boucher de Perthes and John Evans, “The Antiquity of Humankind,” in Brian Fagan (ed.), Eyewitness to Discovery: First-Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World’s Greatest Archaeological Discoveries (Oxford, 1996), pp. 19-28 Thurs 25 February Archaeology as Scientific Fieldwork Who first excavated ancient Mesopotamia and how? Mirjam Brusius, “Misfit Objects: Layard’s Excavations in Ancient Mesopotamia & the Biblical Imagination in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain,” Journal of Literature and Science

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5 (2012): 38–52 Tues 2 March What is Museum Provenance? What information does museum provenance include about where their collections come from and how they get them? And what does it leave out? Assyrian Galleries, British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/assyria-lion-hunts Assyrian Provenance information, Metropolitan Museum: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/322609 Thurs 4 March The Modern Museum: Knowledge or Power? Is the museum a source of democratic knowledge or an instrument of imperial power? Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 4 (1988): 73-102 Tues 9 March DEBATE: SHOULD COLLECTIONS BE RETURNED? Should western museums return colonial collections or should they keep them? Universal Museums Declaration (2004), in Ivan Karp, Corinne Kratz et al. (eds.), Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/ Global Transformations (Duke, 2006), pp. 247-256 Tristram Hunt, Harmut Dorgerloh and Nicholas Thomas, “Restitution Report: Museum Directors Respond,” The Art Newspaper, 27 November 2018 Clip: Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Council of Antiquities (2010): https://www.france24.com/en/20100407-zahi-hawass-secretary-general-egypts-supreme-council-antiquities Thurs 11 March REVIEW OF 1ST HALF OF COURSE TAKE-HOME MIDTERM ESSAY ON ARCHAEOLOGY DUE AFTER SPRING BREAK

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Tues 16 March -- Thurs 18 March ***** SPRING BREAK Tues 23 March Who is the Anthropologist? How did anthropologists define their collecting against earlier curiosity collecting? Hans Sloane, excerpt from Catalogue of Miscellaneous Things, 18th century, British Museum Ira Jacknis, “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology,” in George Stocking, Jr. (ed.), Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (Wisconsin, 1985), pp. 75-111 Thurs 25 March Field-Collecting: Myth Versus Reality Who was “the native collector” in classic anthropology? Elizabeth Seaton, “The Native Collector: Louis Shotridge and the Contests of Possession,” Ethnography 2 (2000): 35-61 Tues 30 March Technology and the Dream of Permanent Recordings How did sound recording promise to preserve Native American culture? Why was the concept of immortality relevant to sound recordings? Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke, 2003), ch. 6 Native American Sound Recordings from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/audio/?fa=subject%3Amusic%7Csubject%3Aindians+of+north+america&c=50&all=true Thurs 1 April Human Remains and NAGPRA How did NAGPRA change American museums by mandating the return of Native American human remains? Martha Graham & Nell Murphy, “NAGPRA at 20: Museum Collections and Reconnections,” Museum Anthropology 33 (2010): 105-124

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PART FOUR:

COLLECTING TODAY:

ART, SOCIETY AND SCIENCE IN CHINA Tues 6 April Collecting Information in Pre-Modern China How did the Chinese state collect information to govern its subjects in the 17th and 18th centuries? Laura Hostetler, “Qing Connections to the Early Modern World: Ethnography and Cartography in Eighteenth-Century China,” Modern Asian Studies 34 (2000): 623-662 Thurs 8 April Chinese Collecting Today: Art & Antiquities What is the history of art and antiquities collecting in China? Why did the Chinese try to destroy their heritage and erase their past? Why kind of new art collecting is emerging today? Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, The China Collectors: America's Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures (St. Martin's Press, 2015), selection Robin Pogrebin, “China’s New Cultural Revolution: A Surge in Art Collecting,” New York Times, 6 September 2011 Tues 13 April Data Collection & Social Surveillance What kinds of technologies have Chinese authorities been developing to track populations? What role have American companies played in developing them? Sui-Wee Lee, “China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise,” New York Times, 21 February 2019 Chris Buckley et al., “How China Turned a City into a Prison,” New York Times, 4 April 2019 Thurs 15 April Genomics and De-Extinction

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What is the purpose of BGI’s collection of genomic information? Dennis Normile, “China’s Sequencing Powerhouse Comes of Age,” Science 335 (2012): 516-19 Review Strasser article on scientific collecting Tues 20 April GENOMIC COLLECTING IN CHINA TODAY How and why do scientists want to generate a living woolly mammoth from a DNA sample? Movie: “Genesis 2.0” (2018), directed by Christian Frei & Maxim Abugaev (1hr. 53 mins.) Thurs 22 April DISCUSSION OF GENESIS 2.0 How and why is modern scientific collecting still using ancient methods? Is it dangerous? James Delbourgo, “Scientific Rebirth,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 10 May 2019 Tues 27 April DISTRIBUTION/DISCUSSION OF FINAL TAKE-HOME Thurs 29 Apr FINAL CLASS: COURSE REVIEW FINAL TAKE-HOME ESSAY ASSIGNMENT: QUESTIONS ON ANTHROPOLOGY PLUS COLLECTING IN CHINA REQUIRED READINGS There is no assigned textbook. Most if not all readings and links to movie and sound clips should be available via SAKAI. Lectures and Readings Lectures combine discussions of readings, debates, attention to the larger themes of the

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course, audio and video material and practical exercises. Students should complete the readings before class and are encouraged to review them afterwards. These are in general short to allow for more time for reflection. It is crucial to take some form of notes as you read, even brief ones, in which you begin to formulate your own thinking. Bear in mind the questions under each unit heading as you read. You will not need to consult extra materials beyond the syllabus to complete the class. Academic Integrity You should ensure that any written work you submit for evaluation is the result of your own thought and writing and that it reflects your own work and not that of another student. Copying work – plagiarism – and/or failure to complete any single assignment will result in an F for the course. If you are struggling with the course, please come and talk to your instructors – we will gladly help you but cannot do so if we are not aware of difficulties. Plagiarism is the use of another person’s words, ideas, or results without giving that person appropriate credit. To avoid plagiarism, every direct quotation must be identified by quotation marks or appropriate indentation and both direct quotation and paraphrasing must be cited properly according to the accepted format for the particular discipline or as required by the instructor in a course. IMPORTANT: Rutgers Academic Integrity – PLEASE READ NOW: http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/academic-integrity-at-rutgers/ Students needing academic adjustments or accommodations because of a documented disability must please present relevant documentation to this effect as soon as possible. Contacting the Professor In compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), please use your Rutgers ScarletMail account (and not a personal email account) to communicate with me via email as needed. STUDENT RESOURCES Counseling, ADAP & Psychiatric Services (CAPS): http://health.rutgers.edu/medical-counseling-services/counseling/ Violence Prevention & Victim Assistance (VPVA) : www.vpva.rutgers.edu/

Commented [MOU1]: update link to: http://health.rutgers.edu/medical-counseling-services/counseling/

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Disability Services: https://ods.rutgers.edu/ Scarlet Listeners: http://www.scarletlisteners.com Just In Case Web App: http://codu.co/cee05e Access helpful mental health information and resources for yourself or a friend in a mental health crisis on your smartphone or tablet and easily contact CAPS or RUPD. Report a Concern: http://health.rutgers.edu/do-something-to-help/