Collections from the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology help to engage students in disciplines beyond anthropology. Confronting new or unfamiliar objects gives students the opportunity to engage and apply their studies by thinking and talking through various themes and ideas prompted by the artifacts.
Classes interested in the history of U.S.-China relations often view the UMMAA's Chinese Government Collection. This collection was assembled in China to represent the nation at the 1884-1885 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans. The Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China created the collection as a demonstration of China’s rising position in global trade. The collection is focused cotton and textile production, but it also contains a variety of other ordinary artifacts and themes. The collection was gifted to the University due to the friendship between the president of U-M at that time, James Angell (who had previously worked in China on behalf of the U.S. government to negotiate treaties) and Sir Robert Hart, inspector general of China’s Maritime Customs Service, who had organized the exhibition.
UMMAA collection managers brought a sample of materials from this collection to U-M central campus for Fusheng Luo’s history class, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: the United States and China Since the Opium Wars (HIST 195). Students examined and discussed the collections in the context of U.S.-China relations at the time. Students of the history class were asked to examine the objects and consider how they were made, who made them, and what they tell us about U.S.-China relations and cultural exchanges in the 1880s.
