Manufacturing the Museum, Making Socialism: The GDR Collections of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden

This module introduces students to applied collection research in a museum context. The course will be taught in collaboration with the DHMD (Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden) and will focus on its GDR collections comprising of anatomical models, educational materials and instructions on public health. The classes will focus on multiple approaches to collection research, ranging from object biographies, visual analysis, archival approaches to the study of material culture. By enquiring into the socialist past of the DHMD, the emphasis is on linking theory with practice across a variety of object-based contexts including their production, circulation and reception, and equipping students to think critically about individual and group contribution. Students will undertake own object research on the DHMD’s GDR collections and learn about wider areas of museum ethnography, memory and heritage studies such as: 

• Museums and institutional history
• Material culture of public health 
• Education and collections
• Entanglements of global socialism
• Development and international collaboration
• Ideologies of labour and personhood 
• Cultural diplomacy

The course is co-convened by dr. Corinne Geering and the DHMD curatorial team.

The seminars will provide practical tools for understanding and researching objects in academic and applied heritage settings. In the duration of the seminars, students will be expected not only to read and present set texts but also engage in collection research.  

The course will be taught synchronously in a hybrid format (at the HU and online).  

The seminar will be in English and the readings will combine English and German material.

However, students are welcome to speak German in class as well as submit their course essays (MAPs) in German. Students are encouraged to contact the lecturer about additional learning and accessibility needs: Magdalena.buchczyk@hu-berlin.de