EGMT 1540: The Ethics of Collecting

Why do we collect? What do we owe to the objects we gather, the people who produced them, and the future communities who will inherit them?

This course examines the ethical dimensions of categorizing, sorting, and collecting across a range of cases: from birdwatching to debates over the acquisition of antiquities to record collecting and even the gathering of human remains for scientific study. We will explore the tensions that structure collecting: preservation and plunder, access and ownership, stewardship and domination, connoisseurship and obsession, memory and forgetting.

Students will analyze ethical frameworks that have justified collecting and consider how power shapes claims about cultural patrimony, conservation, and value. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to articulate and defend ethical responses to a range of dilemmas surrounding possession, preservation, and curation.