This First-Year Seminar offers an in-depth exploration of Baltimore’s queer and trans archives, expansively defined, engaging with interdisciplinary scholarship on "the archive" within queer and trans studies. Beginning with a brief survey of U.S. LGBTQ history, students delve into archival research methods and hands-on explorations in JHU Special Collections. We then engage with queer theory, performance studies, and public humanities scholarship to ask what we can know of the recoverable past and what silences the archive might contain, approaching the queer archive as a complex record of activity that includes ephemera of events, shows, and collective affect; innuendo and gossip; residues of queer nightlife; performance and gesture. We ground these theoretical explorations by visiting Baltimore-based institutional and non-institutional archives, where we engage with 1970s LGBT newspapers and 1960s medical documents, oral histories recorded by local trans artists, street youth photography, and the embodied archives of vogue performance. Throughout the course, we underscore the transformative potential of engaging with the queer and trans past to forge solidarities in the present and map more just and gorgeous futures.

• Days/Times: T 12:00PM - 2:30PM
• Instructor: Plaster, Joseph
• Room: Mergenthaler 431
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course investigates the confluence of archaeology as a discipline, collecting of cultural heritage, and their ongoing roles in the socio-politics of the Western world and Middle East. It focuses primarily on the Middle East, first tracing a narrative history of archaeology in the region during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with its explorers, diplomats, missionaries and gentlemen-scholars. It then examines the relationship of archaeology to the creation of the encyclopedic museum and collecting practices more generally, considering how these activities profoundly shaped the modern world, including the antiquities market and looting. A central theme is the production of knowledge through these activities and how this contributes to aspects of power and (self-)representation.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Feldman, Marian
• Room: Gilman 177
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 13/20
• PosTag(s): HART-ANC, ARCH-ARCH, ARCH-RELATE

This class is an occasion for speculative anthropology, a chance to reimagine this place (an American city on the Jones Falls river) in a future beyond the bustle of our fossil-fueled present. What culture might people of that distant time produce, and how might they make creative use of the many things we leave behind? In this class, we will work together as anthropologists and artists of another time, crafting an inventive and collaborative story about a culture to come, and the material artifacts of a very different collective life. The class will be co-taught by anthropologist Anand Pandian and visual artist Jordan Tierney. We will nurture our imaginations through experiential practices of observing nature, collecting materials, and assembling artifacts. What we build will serve as the core of a spring 2025 local museum exhibition we will plan together.

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Pandian, Anand; Tierney, John T.
• Room: Mergenthaler 426
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/18
• PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE, ENVS-MAJOR

This course surveys museums, from their origins to their most contemporary forms, in the context of broader historical, intellectual, and cultural trends including the social movements of the 20th century. Anthropology, art, history, and science museums are considered. Crosslisted with Archaeology, History, History of Art, International Studies and Medicine, Science & Humanities.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Kingsley, Jennifer P
• Room: Gilman 400
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/25
• PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, ARCH-ARCH, PMUS-INTRO, MSCH-HUM, ARCH-RELATE

Digital media play an increasingly significant role in museums from how museums share and narrate their collections online to the use of AI to catalog things and create metadata about them. This class explores critically how digital tools work to tell stories and invites students to unpack the resulting museum narratives. Students will learn by doing, creating a digital exhibit of five museum objects using Omeka and later transforming their exhibits by creating data of their own design to tell a new story about their objects. This new narrative will apply critical perspectives considered in the course such as, but not limited to, repatriation, critical cataloging, and geo-politics.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: McGinn, Emily
• Room: BLC 4040
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC, MSCH-HUM, ARCH-RELATE

This course will explore the landscape history of Baltimore City, including JHU’s Homewood campus, Evergreen Museum, and surrounding areas. Special attention will be paid to the role of the Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Olmsted design firm, who played an important role in the development of several Baltimore parks and neighborhoods. This class will culminate in either small student exhibition or creation of a public-facing tour.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Finkelstein, Lori
• Room: Gilman 277
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, ARCH-RELATE

Examines the history of African art in the Euro-American world, focusing on the ways that Western institutions have used African artworks to construct narratives about Africa and its billion residents.

• Days/Times: M 6:00PM - 8:30PM
• Instructor: Tervala, Kevin
• Room: Gilman 10
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/12
• PosTag(s): ARCH-RELATE

" In this class, we will collaborate with the Peale Museum— Baltimore’s community museum—to plan, curate, and host an exhibition. In this partnership we will engage with many modes of writing, including analyzing audience and user experiences; using social media to increase engagement; and creating proposals for immersive events that might connect the past neighborhood struggles to present day community concerns. This course will build on the work of students who participated in Reintro to Writing: Lost Baltimore in Spring-Fall 2024, who researched and wrote about life in a West Baltimore neighborhood that was demolished between 1930s and 1970s. All first-year students who have taken Reintro and all students at the sophomore level or above are welcome. The class is open to all students who have taken any Reintro, but previous participants in the Lost Baltimore Reintro are especially encouraged to enroll.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Brodsky, Anne-Elizabeth Murdy; Pavesich, Matthew; Speller, Mo Elsmere Longley
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course will explore the American art museum as a distinctive cultural and political idea. Tracing its origins to the ancient world, the American art museum was descended more immediately from institutions created during the European Enlightenment, but differing with regard to overall mission and civic purpose. This course will explore the various roles played by museums in American society, focusing on programmatic content, organizational design, funding and operating practices, and the particular issues that have arisen in recent years in the areas of cultural property restitution, collection development, special exhibitions, governance and funding, and the larger question of civic purpose.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Weiss, Daniel H
• Room: Gilman 177
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

How did ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean basin (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, Carthage) understand and represent their own and others’ identities and ethnic differences? How did notions and practices around race, citizenship, and immigration evolve from antiquity to the present? How have culture and politics informed artistic, literary, and museum representations of ethnic ‘others’ over time, along with the historical development of ethnography, biological science, and pseudo-sciences of race? What role did “Classics” (the study of Greco-Roman cultures) play in modern colonialism, racecraft, and inequality? And what role can it play in unmaking their legacies, through the ongoing Black Classicism movement, the practice of Critical Race Theory, and the development of more global and interconnective approaches to premodern cultures? RAP provides an opportunity for Hopkins undergraduates and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds to engage in project-based research toward building an open-access, grant-winning educational resource (OER) on “Race in Antiquity.” Participants learn, share, and practice advanced research methods; examine and discuss the history and modern implications of the teaching and study of their fields; test-drive and collaboratively edit OER pilot materials; and create new content based on their own research, for eventual digital publication.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Pandey, Nandini
• Room: Greenhouse 000
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

How do we interpret history for and with broad public audiences? This class introduces students to public history and community-engaged research, emphasizing collaborative knowledge production between academic and non-academic publics. Case studies include virtual reality experiments, walking tours, exhibitions, public art and performance, activist oral history, and community mapping. Students receive training in oral history and podcasting, benefit from guest speakers, and explore methods such as participatory action research, indigenous research methodologies, and shared authority.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Plaster, Joseph
• Room: Mergenthaler 431
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): HIST-US

American museums today face ongoing practical, political and ethical challenges, including economic difficulties, technology and globalization, ongoing debates over the ownership and interpretation of culture and pressure to demonstrate their social value. This course considers how museums are answering these challenges and projects into the future. NOTE: Class usually meets 1:30- 4:00 PM, except for days with field trips (when class will meet 1:30- 5:00 PM instead).

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Forloney, Robert
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 18/18
• PosTag(s): PMUS-INTRO, ARCH-RELATE

This course will introduce you to the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the conservation profession: who gets to be a conservator, where we work and how. What are its origins and how has it evolved? At the end of the course you will be able to: outline the different roles and responsibilities of conservators working in museums, libraries/archives and in private practice, situate the field of conservation within the larger cultural heritage sector and articulate the ways conservators contribute to institutional goals of preservation, access, research and learning, evaluate the risks and vulnerabilities faced by conservators in today’s society, and apply theoretical knowledge to document and stabilize items from JHU Special Collections.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Jarvis, Jennifer
• Room: BLC 5015
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): PMUS-INTRO, PMUS-PRAC

Oral Histories are a means by which history is both generated and preserved. Talking to and recording people in their own voices is immensely valuable, but also brings challenges. This course equips students with the ideas, theoretical framework and methods of making and interpreting oral histories and provides hands-on experience researching, designing and creating an archival record of our time to professional standards. Our project focuses on Baltimore's Confederate monuments. We will interview key stakeholders in debates that led to their removal and in ongoing conversations about what to do with them now.

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Staff
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 15/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course addresses the historic role of the African American cemetery as sacred and political space, with important links to other Black institutions. Operating in partnership with Mount Auburn Cemetery in Baltimore, owned and operated by the Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church, we will visit the cemetery and related locations in Baltimore throughout the semester. Our collective goal is to research and share stories that further the interests of these important and vulnerable sites.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Dean, Gabrielle
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/8
• PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC

Museums across the globe are rewriting their infrastructure, energy use, waste management, and exhibitions and conservation policies and practices to respond to our ecological crises. Students will conduct field research and analyze data; investigate “next” practices, case studies, and the challenges particular to museums; and write a white paper; all with an eye towards contributing to the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative - an eco-challenge, sustainability planning, and suite of art exhibitions dedicated to environmental themes.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Kingsley, Jennifer P
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/12
• PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, MSCH-HUM

Many of the buildings and objects that fill our daily lives deliberately invoke earlier styles. In the United States, one form that has been revisited over and over again is the “colonial” style, with “colonial” serving as a catch-all phrase for the material culture associated with the settlement of North America by Europeans and the societies that these settlers built in the 17th and 18th centuries. This course interrogates the history and motivations for the United States' many colonial revivals and the role these played in shaping American museums and their collections. Students will contribute research, writing, and object selection toward the 2025 Homewood Museum exhibition "If Walls Could Talk" which will explore the many lives of Homewood House, a National Historic Landmark, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of JHU and the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Finkelstein, Lori
• Room: Hmwd House Wine Cllr
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 12/12
• PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC