Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography – (M.Sc.)

Contents

Teaching is delivered in tutorials, lectures, and seminars. Each student is allocated a supervisor for the year.

In the first term, students have tutorials with the supervisor and attend lectures. MAME students also participate in a weekly seminar in the first term which provides an introduction to the history and operation of the Pitt Rivers Museum.

In the second term, students select two of the optional subjects being offered for special study. These may change from year to year but have included: Key Debates in the Anthropology of Art; Ethnography of Museums; Ethnomusicology; and Ethnography of Photography. Students may also choose from regional and thematic options given by Social Anthropology staff.

The third term is primarily devoted to examination preparation. Following successful performance in the final examinations, each student will prepare a dissertation of about 10,000 words (30,000 for M.Phil. students) on a topic chosen in consultation with the supervisor. M.Sc. students write the thesis over the summer for submission in September. M.Phil. students research over the summer and participate in a second year of coursework while writing up, and submit the thesis in spring of their second year.

Lectures focus on themes and case studies in material culture theory and its history. They change from year to year but have included topics such as "Dilemmas in Museum Representation"; "Artifacts, histories, traditions, and frontiers: transcultural objects", "Objects and colonialism in Papua New Guinea"; "Mass Production and Mass Consumption"; and "Artful Bodies: representation and transformation in Papua new Guinea".