HAA 1009 Research Seminar: Configuring Disciplines

At the same time that the library and the printed book have been transformed by on-line and digital media, so too has the role of the museum been reshaped in response to new technologies and shifting expectations of the gallery as a space of learning. Configuring Disciplines, a combined undergraduate and graduate seminar and collaborative exhibition project, seeks to examine the dynamic interchanges between reader, image and text; and beholder, object and space. At the core of these inquiries are questions about the nature and purpose of collections in a digital era and the role of the gallery as a support to scholarly and instructional activities.

The undergraduate seminar will investigate modes of graphic image-making developed since the Renaissance and used to create knowledge in different scholarly or scientific disciplines. Undergraduates, working in close consultation with two HAA professors and graduate student mentors, will have a unique opportunity to work with objects from local collections and get hands-on experience with exhibition-design. Illustrated texts from Pittsburgh collections will be the focus of weekly discussions and will be used to raise questions about the intrinsic qualities of the book as an object and mediator of knowledge.

The seminar will serve as a workshop and think-tank for the development of an exhibition on these themes that will take place in the University Art Gallery (Frick Fine Arts Building) in September - October 2014. The principal objects examined in the seminar and exhibition will be drawn from library and museum collections in the Pittsburgh region. The overarching themes of the exhibition will be developed in seminar during the spring semester and sections within the exhibition will be curated by students. This is an unprecedented opportunity to think about the relationship between scholarly research and exhibition practices and the role of the University Art Gallery and local collections.