Becoming a Nation: Assemblages of People, Places, and Artifacts in Taiwan's National History Museums

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum in Out-of-School Spaces

Abstract

This paper explores the subject position produced in and by national museums in Taiwan. Much of the critical work on museums in the post-colony explore representation – who is visible and who is erased. But as we engage intellectually in complex ways of understanding people and culture as integrated with the non-human world, how do museums take portray these relationships? How do museums participate in a dynamic production of the nation? What theoretical lenses help us shift from representational critique to critical examination? This paper takes up these questions using posthumanism and materialism to read national history museums.

Author

• Sandra Schmidt, Teachers College, Columbia University