Imagining other childhoods : dolls and the Museum of Childhood as an imperial space
Ellis, Catriona (2024) Imagining other childhoods : dolls and the Museum of Childhood as an imperial space. American Behavioral Scientist. ISSN 1552-3381 (In Press) (https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268553)
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Abstract
This article considers how museums of childhood in Britain were imagined as racialized spaces, designed to simultaneously project both a notion of universal childhood and of racial hierarchies. The legacies of this work matter for efforts today to decolonise museums. The case study is the ethnographic doll collections of Edward Lovett (1852-1933), an amateur folklorist best known for his collection of home-made dolls. The ways in which these dolls were collected, described, catalogued and displayed reveals the racialized assumptions of British imperialism in the early twentieth century, including the infantilization of other cultures and the widely held belief in evolutionary biology. These doll collections are still displayed for children, and this article considers how contemporary museums negotiate the conflicting impetuses to decolonize museums, to teach today’s young people about the prejudices of their ancestors, and to engage with the widely accepted idea that all childhood is defined by play.
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Item type: Article ID code: 90043 Dates: DateEvent15 July 2024Published15 July 2024AcceptedSubjects:
General Works > Museums (General). Collectors and collecting (General)Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Humanities > History Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 25 Jul 2024 14:25 Last modified: 25 Jul 2024 14:25 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/90043