HOW TO TURN YOUR FIXATION ON AN OBSCURE MUSEUM IN ENGLAND INTO ACADEMIC RESEARCH: THE THESIS STREAM

Final Project Reflections | Caitlin McCurdy

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This new Musings column will hopefully illuminate a road rarely walked down, and one I am currently venturing down: the MMSt thesis stream. First, let’s go over some basics. What is a thesis? Why do one? What am I doing? Here we go:

The basic requirements for the thesis stream include all the usual museum studies course requirements, in addition to INF1240 Research Methods or an independent reading course. The thesis itself is worth 2.0 credits, so keep that in mind while planning out your second year or you may end up taking 1.0 credit extra by accident.

The next step is to find a supervisor. Now what I did, was panic email the MMSt director unsure of where to start or how to even ask such a question of my professors. But it need not be a panic-inducing situation, after a quick meeting with the MMSt director, I was quickly pointed in the right direction, and found my co-supervisors Irina D. Mihalache and Patrick Keilty. At the start of Year 2, you submit your thesis proposal, and it is approved by Graduate Committee on Standing in early September. Most of the thesis work is done in the second year (that’s where I’m at). During Fall & Winter of your second year, you got to research, write, research, and also maybe write. More information can be found here

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Photo courtesy of Caitlin McCurdy.

What initially drew me to doing a thesis was an interest in exploring the connections and parallels in the development of three industries/ways of thinking that emerged in the 19th century: Egyptology, museums, and sexual classification. Honestly, it was a trip to England in February of 2018 that I credit (blame) for making me reconsider an Egyptology MA and instead shifting focus to museum studies.
My research centers a case study on the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, a small university museum in London, England based out of University College London. I was entranced by a. the sheer volume of stuff they have and b. the direct ties to Egyptology founding figure and the museum’s namesake, William Flinders Petrie, and how the current museum is grappling with the shift in academic and popular thinking away from glorifying colonizers.

Me at the Petrie, circa 2018. 

Over the last year, this initial curiosity has grown and matured in an actual research framework with methodology and scope. There is a number of ancient Egyptian artifacts that can be considered erotic or lude, I’ve written about a few in my previous column, most notably this Temple Wall of Senwosret. Through research I did in my undergrad, I found that the erotic that was presumed onto these objects were sometime misplaced or a misinterpretation on the part of a modern scholar. Epistemologically, what does this mean for Egyptology as a field and museums as a place for safekeeping knowledge.

Ultimately, the question I am trying to answer is “How does historical knowing function erotically within ancient Egypt?”. Now, what does that actually mean I’m researching? Excellent question, I don’t know. But here’s what I’ve been reading for the last six months.

The foundational texts for my thesis are The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective by Arjun Appadurai and Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds by Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner. Through a Marxist framework informed by these books, I define 19th century Egyptology as a tournament of values, where Egyptian artifacts are reconfigured as commodities, with new meaning and value ascribed to them, which then alters their “biography”. This process effects any meaning making that has occurred since their initial removal from Egypt. So, my earlier question of what does erotic knowing look like in ancient Egypt may be more accurately written as how is this knowledge produced, and who is producing it?

I love a good chart!

Because I’m focusing on erotic artifacts, I knew eventually my research would lead me into the realm of queer theory. I had previously read some Foucault and David Halperin writings on how to historically study sex and sexuality but was unsure where to begin to tie such a framwork into my museological framework. One of my supervisors, Patrick Keilty, referred me to the writings of Elizabeth Freeman and Valerie Traub on erotohistoriography and Pete Sigal’s writings on Ethnopornography, which ultimately became the lens through which I will be studying my selected artifacts from the Petrie.

My current thinking is that colonial knowledge and commoditization create a “Victorian scrim”, raising questions of whose erotic experience is being interpreted, and whose erotic way of knowing is involved in erotohistoriography. Now that I have a framework and direction, my next step is some historical and archival research into the museum itself. This means searching through annual reports, archaeological field reports and various other publications. Wish me luck!

Next in this column, we’ll hear about what other theses the fine folks in the MMSt thesis stream are doing.

Exterior of the Petrie, the pizza shop next door provides a unique olfactory experience. Source