Spring 2012 Events

Brown Bag Series:

13 April, 12:00 pm, Walker Hall 201D

Mark Thurner, Department of History

The Museum of Babel

Museums speak one sacred language, in vernacular profusion. What makes this paradox possible? A clue may be taken from the “Library of Babel” of Jorge Luis Borges: like that library, the museum is infinitely replicable, albeit in a periodic sense. Another clue may be skimmed from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: museums provide the immemorial past and limitless future that all nations, adrift as they are in homogenous, empty time, desire.   Thus, museums must infinitely refashion themselves so as to stay “up to date” with the past that their future demands. This talk will share punctual meditations from Prof. Thurner’s ongoing research on the histories of refashioning among a periodic series of museums in the transatlantic Latin world, from Italy to Argentina. 

The Humanities Brown Bag Series features informal talks by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere’s (CHPS) Rothman Summer Fellows. Faculty fellows will speak for 20-30 minutes in length about their summer work, leaving ample time for questions and discussion. Please feel free to bring your own lunch, and the CHPS will provide coffee and dessert.

For more information on becoming a Rothman Summer Fellow, see the Call for Proposals.

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