German Studies Lecture Series: Jutta Eming - How Do You Dance a Cabinet of Curiosities?
- When
- Tuesday, November 17, 202612:00 PM – 1:15 PM PSTAdd to calendarGoogle Calendar
- Where
- Building 260, Pigott Hall Rm 216450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 260, Stanford, CA 94305Open in Maps
- Hosted by
- Department of German Studies
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About
Please join German Studies Lecture Series for How Do You Dance a Cabinet of Curiosities? A conversation with Professor Jutta Eming (Freie Universität Berlin).
As a collection and exhibition convention, a Cabinet of Curiosity or Wunderkammer is regarded as a historical intermediate stage between the medieval treasury and the modern museum. It was widespread throughout Europe from the 16th to 18th century until its holdings began to be distributed to newly founded natural history, art, or ethnological museums in the 18th and 19th century. Taking a recent choreography as a starting point, this talk introduces the view that the Wunderkammer is not primarily an early modern form of collection, but a cultural-historical phenomenon that spans epochs and is part of a continuum of discourses on the marvelous. This includes the fact that the Wunderkammer has obviously become a broader cultural studies topic and forms a reference for a variety of recent academic and non-academic trends. In premodern times these cabinets constitute a European view of the world with curiosity in “monstrous” races on its margins, and a practice of perception in which narration, appropriation, collecting, and presentation are closely linked. In recent times this interest in curiosity has flipped in emancipatory ways: The Wunderkammer now seems to provide a space in which humans negotiate the limits of binary identity and redefine their place in the world.
RSVP for the Jutta Eming event here.