Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

Reading British Identity in London's Museums

Instructor(s): Susan Bender, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work

Museums are powerful sites of learning, but do they teach more than just “facts” about history? Students will engage this question through visits to a number of London’s most remarkable museums, learning in this process how to pose and answer questions that might yield the more subtle, but potent messages that underlie these institutions’ exhibitions. Students will learn to read the ways in which museums combine visual images with text to create stories that both reflect and create a community’s sense of its identity. Here they will uncover some of the most potent stories that the citizens of London and Great Britain tell about who they are.