This course develops historical and theoretical perspectives for understanding the intersections of post-Enlightenment European literature and museum culture. By probing the specific ways literary texts and exhibitions organize and arrange objects to tell a culture's stories, the course works to understand what museums and literature also have in common and how modern literature (novels and poems) and public museums such as the Altes Museum and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, the Louvre in Paris, and the Metropolitan in New York are driven by similar cultural forces. Authors include: JW Goethe, Gustav Flaubert, William Carlos Williams, Rainer Maria Rilke, Peter Weiss, Dubravka Ugresic, WG Sebald.

This course can be taken for graduate credit. Graduate students will be expected to contribute a short report in class on a topic of their choosing as well as write a longer research paper.