This course explores the ways in which objects and material culture embody personal narrative. Moving back and forth from ephemeral traces of events and experiences to the culturally invested luxury goods that create legacy to the objects that facilitate daily life, this class will use, as its primary references, examples that draw from queer and African American cultures to underscore the potential of objects to tell the stories that not only reflect majority traditions and experiences but those of the disenfranchised, the details of whose lives are often obscured. In addition to readings that will provide background for class discussion, student will be asked to play the roles of detectives, archeologists, and curators at various sites around New York City. Each student will also be asked to create an annotated material record that reveals the public and private lives of one individual. That record may consist of texts, objects or any variety of media chosen or designed by the student. This blogs serves as an archive for the work done in the context of this course and related materials that become relevant to this exploration.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Michael Brown Federal Autopsy

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/09/federal-autopsy-released-in-ferguson-shooting/21005054/?cps=gravityhttp://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/09/federal-autopsy-released-in-ferguson-shooting/21005054/?cps=gravity

The release of Michael Brown's federal autopsy seemed relevant to this class for a number of reasons.
1. The purpose of an autopsy is to use the human body to gather evidence about how and why someone died.
2. Michael Brown's death is connected to the racial and equality issues we have discussed this semester.
3. I think, most interestingly, the fact that this is the third autopsy report that has been released. Three reports, which are supposed to be based on fact. Why would you need three of something that is purely documenting the facts? Also, was it really any question how he died? It's interesting how the gathering of evidence is adapted based on the situation. And an autopsy, intended primarily to find the cause of death, starts to become used to try and fill out all of the aspects of the situation, like by looking at bruises and locations of injuries to try to put together a more accurate story of what happened.

Posted by Briana Lynch

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