After a semester of exploring collections in myriad media formats — analog photography collections at the Free Library and digital images on Instagram, cassette tape assemblages and Spotify streams, W. E. B. Du Bois first editions and Jet magazines at the Charles Blockson Afro-American Collection and digital exhibitions at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, collections of dead media and digital collection platforms that invite serendipity, collections of zines and comic books in the Kislak Center and collections of bricks and fabrics in the Materials Library, historical local ephemera at the Library Company and assemblages of protest media at the Palestinian solidarity encampment just a few hundred feet away from our classroom — we each curated a collection of our own and a means for its display. All of the following projects are shared with the students’ permission.
Maggie, a design and STS double-major, created an interactive index and a set of photo books that explore the “what’s in my bag phenomenon” as a form of self-portraiture. As she explains, “This project is ultimately an exploration of people as walking and living collections in a literal sense of the word, and aims to begin an introspection of the ways we label, organize, and present ourselves. In particular, I am interested in contrasts between the explicit and the implied, between the pictorial and physical, and between impersonality and personality.”
Similarly, Jasmine, a fine arts major, created a website that skeuomorphically references a card index cataloguing different forms of letter-writing — specifically “epistolary media in ‘unusual’ formats that involve mutations of contents, recipients, or media. In an effort to push the boundaries of traditional letters and postcards,” Jasmine explains, “I explore various means and formats for communication, ranging in sizes, information density, and target audiences.”
Valeria, a health and societies major, was curious about the state of film criticism, who gets to call themselves a critic, and the range of venues and media across which criticism takes place. So, she created a desktop cinema project, “Film Critique, Post-Critique, Meta-Critique,” that collects examples of official and amateur film criticism — from paywalled legacy media reviews to Letterboxd feuds to Twitter shitposts — that captures the cacophonous contemporary condition of critique.
Ana, a graduate student in international education, created a pop-up book / scrapbook exploring, along parallel tracks, Aldo Van Eyck’s Seventeen Playgrounds in Amsterdam and the playgrounds of Philadelphia, a city from which she’ll soon be departing. She examined how a collection of elemental forms and materials — blocks and bars, sand and concrete — and their documentation through photography, issue an invitation to play.
Drawing inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Michelle, a graduate student in management, created a collection about wrappings — both metaphorical and literal — and she “wrapped” that collection of wrappers in a collection of nested files, a sort of technical or protocological wrapping itself. As Michelle explains, “I also wanted to investigate how different types of wrappers serve different purposes. Some wrappers simply offer protection from the outside world… Others also include a layer of visual appeal or luxury… Others have very complex functions, such as our very own skin, which regulates our temperature, protects us from infection, acts as a sensory organ, and much more.”
Alejandra, a neuroscience major and an avid soccer fan, wanted to explore “the commodification of soccer through the men’s FIFA World Cup and illustrate how commodification impacts fans psychologically.” She created an extensive Prezi that serves as a collection of collections — both her and her family members’ and others’ — including everything from sports memorabilia and museums to brand campaigns, theme songs, and NFTs.
Maya, a biology and healthcare management double-major, created a website that explores lesbian representation across various media formats. “Shadows to Spotlights,” she explains, aims to “highlight the modern fetishization of queer women and to celebrate self-defined visibility in the lesbian community over the last 30 years.”
Yafei, a Masters of Liberal Arts student, created a digital exhibition that tracks artifacts looted from the Old Summer Palace in Yuanmingyuan, China. As she explains, “The exhibition traces the history from colonial plunder to modern-day restitution and technological reconstruction to develop a nuanced understanding of how media coverage and museum representation of Yuanming Yuan can help us understand the past and explore creativity for future museum education about history memory.”
Juliette, an art history and consumer psychology double-major, and a burgeoning record collector, was curious about why and how people collect vinyl and how record shop owners curate their collections. She created a Prezi, “Collecting Vinyl: The Revival,” to share a collection of resources — exhibitions, insights from first-person interviews and fieldwork, etc — that help us better understand what pleasures we derive from “taking the time to place the needle on the groove and letting the music vibrate through a space.”
Ivanna, a Ukrainian-American architecture and fine arts major, created a riso-printed artist’s book, Війна через екран / War Through the Screen, to explore what it has meant for her to experience the “ongoing war in Ukraine for over a decade, primarily through the lens of [her] phone screen”; to give texture to those digitized scenes through the riso printing process; and to contextualize the collection, or stream, of mass-mediated images through conversations with family in Ukraine.
Julia, a creative writing major, found that her friends and classmates rarely shared her fondness for Shakespeare. “These reactions to a repertoire of work that I find to be so divine, influential, beautiful, and enriching have always been so frustrating to me,” she explained. So, Julia created a digital exhibition documenting Shakespeare’s influence on modern and contemporary film, fiction, music, commerce, and the visual arts.
Mia, an economics and international relations double-major, aimed to study the collection of artifacts and mementos she accumulated during her study-abroad experience in Morocco, so she created a Prezi that examines how those collections evidence the capacity for international study to enrich students’ historical knowledge and cultural awareness, and enable them to build enduring friendships.
Ryan, a mechanical engineering major, was fascinated by decay as a creative, generative force — so he created a website collecting examples of contemporary artworks — sculptures, paintings, digital art, film, etc — that engage with the concept. He asks: “How can the concept of decay be harnessed as a source of inspiration for artists, writers, and innovators, and what role does the juxtaposition of decay and creation play in the creative process?”
Jingyi, a communications student visiting Penn from the National University of Singapore, sought to explore the parallels between China’s and the United States’ film censorship policies and practices. So, she created a Prezi, “C*ns*rsh*p on Film,” collecting various examples of recent censorial activity, as well as techniques filmmakers and film audiences deploy to circumvent censorship.
And finally, Celia, a political science major visiting from Queen Mary University, was troubled by stereotypical, reductive representations of Kenya in tourism campaigns. So, she created a video collecting opportunities for domestic tourism that both more accurately represent Kenya’s culture and invite engagement by Kenyans themselves.
A few students chose not to share their work, but they contributed to our collective knowledge, too!