Met
Audio Tour,
Mini-test,
and Extra-Credit Analytic Essay
The Tour:
By November 1st you will
have to have visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taken the
Audio Tour because on that day there will be a mini-test based on
the tour.
There are two ways to do the tour: (1) you can download the tour and
listen to it at the Museum on an MP3 player (I-Pod or the like) or
(2) you can purchase for fifty cents an audio CD and listen to the
tour on a cd-player. I have one cd-player I can lend out for students
who do not have one.
Details on getting
to the Met:
Location:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
General Information: 212-535-7710
Directions
by Subway, Bus & Car
(directly from the Met's website)
Hours:
Friday 9:30 a.m.–9:00 p.m.
Saturday 9:30 a.m.–9:00 p.m.
Sunday 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Monday Closed
Tuesday 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Wednesday 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Thursday 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
You will be going to the
"Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas" from the Permanent
Collection on the First Floor
(map
of the first floor with location of "Arts
of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas" indicated)
(Look at the end of this page for a map of the
tour itself once you arrived at "Arts of Africa, Oceania, and
the Americas")
| Many
of the regions discussed in the Audio Tour are currently facing
extreme famine, endangering 2.5 million people. You may wish
to donate money to help alleviate the starvation in the region
you are studying. See here |
The Mini-Test:
You
will have a test worth 3% of your final semester grade, or 300 Fritz
Points
In class, I will show several
images of objects from the museum in class. For each object, I will
provide you with a question that you will need to answer using material
from the audio tour. You will be allowed one 3" x 5" index
card of handwritten notes to bring into the test with you.
Because the topic of the tour -- Afro-European encounters in West
and Central Africa, 1450 - 1800 -- focused on objects that tell the
story of the interaction between Europeans and African, the
mini-test questions, too, will focus on that interaction.
Knowing this will help make you to prepare for the mini-test.
To help you prepare for
the test, here's an example.
Let's say the audio tour
discussed the following object:
The tour might tell you
the following (which I've synthesized from the two places in the Met's
card catalog):
|
Brilliantly colored and elaborately
woven textiles known as kente are worn by individuals
of distinction throughout the Asante kingdom. Monumental kente
wrappers are composed of strips that are separately woven and
sewn together. The intricate designs characteristic of these
textiles are individually named and may be reserved for the
exclusive use of the king or other high-ranking officials. To
create them requires significant preparation and skill; indeed,
Asante legend traces the origins of kente to the spider Ananse,
a trickster figure known for his exceptional wisdom and cleverness.
Because of its expense and symbolic associations, only persons
of high rank wore kente, and certain patterns were reserved
solely for the king's use. A royal weaving center was established
in the seventeenth century on the outskirts of the capital at
Kumasi, where the creations of weavers could be inspected and
claimed by royal patrons. Originally, these cloths were made
of white cotton with woven designs of indigo-dyed thread. By
the seventeenth century, however, luxurious silks imported by
European slave-traders were incorporated, resulting in the vibrant
and richly hued textiles that are so admired today.
|
I might ask this question:
In a sentence or
two, describe how the vibrant and rich hues of Kente cloth are a product
of the slave trade itself.
You might respond with:
Originally, kente cloths
were woven in patterns of simply two colors, blue and white, but the
rise of the slave trade gave the Ashanti kingdom access to brightly
colored imported silks which the kingdom's weavers incorporated into
Kente cloth. Thus, the bright colors we now associate with Kente cloth
were made possible by the slave trade.
Such an answer would receive
100%!
MAPS:
Map of the tour without
the route indicated:
Map of the tour with
the route indicated:
Extra-Credit Analytic
Essay (150 Fritz Points):
Scholars sometimes distinquish between multiculturalism
and interculturalism as ways to think about cultural diversity.
While both multiculturalism
and interculturalism
assume that cultures can be very different from each other and that
no culture has a monopoly on virtue, multiculturalism
and interculturalism
think about cultures in different ways. Multiculturalism
--for some scholars -- assumes that essential aspects of a culture
stay pretty much the same over time and have little to do with the
essential aspects of other cultures. A good visual analogy for this
might be that multiculturalism
thinks of cultural diversity like billiard balls on a pool table --
the balls bounce off (or encounter) each other, but don't actually
change their nature through contact. An important aspect of multiculturalism
is the idea of cultural authenticity; there are things -- according
to multiculturalism
-- that are authentically aspects of any culture.
Interculturalism,
by contrast, assumes that while there are always different cultures,
those individual cultures are always changing (often as a result of
contact with another culture). Accordingly, it's not possible to label
an aspect of a culture "authentic" or "inauthentic."
In an essay of
250 - 400 words using the evidence from the Audio-Tour, which approach
-- multiculturalism or interculturalism -- is
the most useful model for understanding the encounter between Europeans
and Africans in Africa? Be sure to
organize your paper around a thesis, and to
have 6 pieces of evidence -- in the form of direct quotations of no
more than 10 words -- to support your argument. Label your claim/evidence/warrant
formats.
TURN YOUR ESSAY IN BY HAND ON THE SAME DAY AS
WE HAVE THE MINI-TEST