Book picks similar to
Making Museums Matter by Stephen E. Weil
museum-studies
non-fiction
museums
museum
Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums
Lance Grande - 2017
They have also become vibrant educational centers, full of engaging exhibits that share those discoveries with students and an enthusiastic general public. At the heart of it all from the very start have been curators. Yet after three decades as a natural history curator, Lance Grande found that he still had to explain to people what he does. This book is the answer—and, oh, what an answer it is: lively, exciting, up-to-date, it offers a portrait of curators and their research like none we’ve seen, one that conveys the intellectual excitement and the educational and social value of curation. Grande uses the personal story of his own career—most of it spent at Chicago’s storied Field Museum—to structure his account as he explores the value of research and collections, the importance of public engagement, changing ecological and ethical considerations, and the impact of rapidly improving technology. Throughout, we are guided by Grande’s keen sense of mission, of a job where the why is always as important as the what. This beautifully written and richly illustrated book is a clear-eyed but loving account of natural history museums, their curators, and their ever-expanding roles in the twenty-first century.
Diffusion of Innovations
Everett M. Rogers - 1982
It has sold 30,000 copies in each edition and will continue to reach a huge academic audience.In this renowned book, Everett M. Rogers, professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, explains how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances--a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people. The fifth edition addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.
Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Lauren Slater - 2004
F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.
Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article
Howard S. Becker - 1986
But for some reason they choose to ignore those guidelines and churn out turgid, pompous, and obscure prose. Distinguished sociologist Howard S. Becker, true to his calling, looks for an explanation for this bizarre behavior not in the psyches of his colleagues but in the structure of his profession. In this highly personal and inspirational volume he considers academic writing as a social activity.Both the means and the reasons for writing a thesis or article or book are socially structured by the organization of graduate study, the requirements for publication, and the conditions for promotion, and the pressures arising from these situations create the writing style so often lampooned and lamented. Drawing on his thirty-five years' experience as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Becker exposes the foibles of the academic profession to the light of sociological analysis and gentle humor. He also offers eminently useful suggestions for ways to make social scientists better and more productive writers. Among the topics discussed are how to overcome the paralyzing fears of chaos and ridicule that lead to writer's block; how to rewrite and revise, again and again; how to adopt a persona compatible with lucid prose; how to deal with that academic bugaboo, "the literature." There is also a chapter by Pamela Richards on the personal and professional risks involved in scholarly writing.In recounting his own trials and errors Becker offers his readers not a model to be slavishly imitated but an example to inspire. Throughout, his focus is on the elusive work habits that contribute to good writing, not the more easily learned rules of grammar and punctuation. Although his examples are drawn from sociological literature, his conclusions apply to all fields of social science, and indeed to all areas of scholarly endeavor. The message is clear: you don't have to write like a social scientist to be one.
What to Listen for in Music
Aaron Copland - 1939
Whether you listen to Mozart or Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland's provocative suggestions for listening to music from his point of view will bring you a deeper appreciation of the most rewarding of all art forms.
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity
Marshall Berman - 1982
In this unparalleled book, Marshall Berman takes account of the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world and the impact of modernism on art, literature and architecture. This new edition contains an updated preface addressing the critical role the onset of modernism played in popular democratic upheavals in the late 1920s.
A Short Guide to Writing About Art (The Short Guide Series)
Sylvan Barnet - 1981
This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.
The Interpretation of Cultures
Clifford Geertz - 1973
This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers
Kate L. Turabian - 1955
Bellow. Strauss. Friedman. The University of Chicago has been the home of some of the most important thinkers of the modern age. But perhaps no name has been spoken with more respect than Turabian. The dissertation secretary at Chicago for decades, Kate Turabian literally wrote the book on the successful completion and submission of the student paper. Her Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, created from her years of experience with research projects across all fields, has sold more than seven million copies since it was first published in 1937.Now, with this seventh edition, Turabian’s Manual has undergone its most extensive revision, ensuring that it will remain the most valuable handbook for writers at every level—from first-year undergraduates, to dissertation writers apprehensively submitting final manuscripts, to senior scholars who may be old hands at research and writing but less familiar with new media citation styles. Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the late Wayne C. Booth—the gifted team behind The Craft of Research—and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff combined their wide-ranging expertise to remake this classic resource. They preserve Turabian’s clear and practical advice while fully embracing the new modes of research, writing, and source citation brought about by the age of the Internet.Booth, Colomb, and Williams significantly expand the scope of previous editions by creating a guide, generous in length and tone, to the art of research and writing. Growing out of the authors’ best-selling Craft of Research, this new section provides students with an overview of every step of the research and writing process, from formulating the right questions to reading critically to building arguments and revising drafts. This leads naturally to the second part of the Manual for Writers, which offers an authoritative overview of citation practices in scholarly writing, as well as detailed information on the two main citation styles (“notes-bibliography” and “author-date”). This section has been fully revised to reflect the recommendations of the fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and to present an expanded array of source types and updated examples, including guidance on citing electronic sources.The final section of the book treats issues of style—the details that go into making a strong paper. Here writers will find advice on a wide range of topics, including punctuation, table formatting, and use of quotations. The appendix draws together everything writers need to know about formatting research papers, theses, and dissertations and preparing them for submission. This material has been thoroughly vetted by dissertation officials at colleges and universities across the country.This seventh edition of Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is a classic reference revised for a new age. It is tailored to a new generation of writers using tools its original author could not have imagined—while retaining the clarity and authority that generations of scholars have come to associate with the name Turabian.
Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums
Amy Lonetree - 2012
However, a shift is occurring, giving Indigenous people a larger role in determining exhibition content. In Decolonizing Museums, Amy Lonetree examines the complexities of these new relationships with an eye toward exploring how museums can grapple with centuries of unresolved trauma as they tell the stories of Native peoples. She investigates how museums can honor an Indigenous worldview and way of knowing, challenge stereotypical representations, and speak the hard truths of colonization within exhibition spaces to address the persistent legacies of historical unresolved grief in Native communities.Lonetree focuses on the representation of Native Americans in exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. Drawing on her experiences as an Indigenous scholar and museum professional, Lonetree analyzes exhibition texts and images, records of exhibition development, and interviews with staff members. She addresses historical and contemporary museum practices and charts possible paths for the future curation and presentation of Native lifeways.
Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory
Mike Wallace - 1996
It shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. A leading public historian, Mike Wallace observes that we are a people who think of ourselves as having shed the past but also avid tourists who are on a 'heritage binge,' flocking by the thousands to Ellis Island, Colonial Williamsburg, or the Vietnam Memorial. Wallace probes into the trivialization of history that pervades American culture as well as the struggles over public memory that provoke stormy controversy. The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U.S. government decided to use the A-Bomb against Japan. Wallace scrutinizes the actual plans for the exhibit and investigates the ways in which the controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media, and the general public. Whether his subject is multimillion dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Mike Wallace shows how their depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left out, and who is authorized to make the decisions. Author note: Mike Wallace is Professor of History at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is the co-author, with Edwin G. Burrows, of "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898", winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Werner's Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts
Patrick Syme - 1814
This new edition brings the classic work back to life.In the late eighteenth century, mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner devised a standardized color scheme that allowed him to describe even the subtlest of chromatic differences with consistent terminology. His scheme was then adapted by an Edinburgh flower painter, Patrick Syme, who used the actual minerals described by Werner to create the color charts in the book, enhancing them with examples from flora and fauna.In the pre-photographic age, almost all visual details had to be captured via the written word, and scientific observers could not afford ambiguity in their descriptions. Werner's handbook became an invaluable resource for naturalists and anthropologists, including Charles Darwin, who used it to identify colors in nature during his seminal voyage on the HMS Beagle. Werner's terminology lent both precision and lyricism to Darwin's pioneering writings, enabling his readers to envision a world they would never see.Werner's Nomenclature of Colours is a charming artifact from the golden age of natural history and global exploration. This beautiful pocket-size facsimile is certain to delight and inform a new generation of artists and scientists.
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx - 1848
Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom.This new edition includes an extensive introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, Britain's leading expert on Marx and Marxism, providing a complete course for students of The Communist Manifesto, and demonstrating not only the historical importance of the text, but also its place in the world today.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums
Franklin D. Vagnone - 2015
They need not only to engage the communities surrounding them, but also to collaborate with visitors on the type and quality of experience they provide. This book -is a ground-breaking manifesto that calls for the establishment of a more inclusive, visitor-centered paradigm based on the shared experience of human habitation;-draws inspiration from film, theater, public art, and urban design to transform historic house museums;-provides a how-to guide for making historic house museums sustainable, through five primary themes: communicating with the surrounding community, engaging the community, re-imagining the visitor experience, celebrating the detritus of human habitation, and acknowledging the illusion of the shelter’s authenticity;-offers a wry, but informed, rule-breaking perspective from authors with years of experience; -gives numerous vivid examples of both good and not-so-good practices from house museums in the U.S.
The Sociological Imagination
C. Wright Mills - 1959
Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.