Fall Quarter 1999, Indigenous Property Rights

Conveners: Richard Epstein (Law School) and Beth Povinelli (Anthropology)

Session 1: A Discussion of National Policies of Cultural Recognition
Reading: Elizabeth Povinelli, UC Anthropology, "National Policies of Cultural Recognition and the Asymptotes of Reason."

Session 2: David Haddock, Northwestern University Law School, "Biological Arithmetic, Cultural Economics, and the Amerindian Termination Dilemma"

Session 3: Rosemary Coombe, University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Munk Centre for International Studies, "Culture: Anthropology's Old Vice or International Law's New Virtue?"

Session 4: Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School, "Conquest and Contract with Indigenous Cultures: A Partial American and New Zealand Comparison"

Readings:

• An opinion by Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of M'Intosh v. Johnson, 1823 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, on the right of conquest.
• The Treaty of Waitangi(English and Maori).
• A speech I delivered when in New Zealand in March as a guest of the New Zealand Business Round Table titled "The Treaty of Waitangi: A Plain Meaning Interpretation." (This is an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.)

Winter Quarter 2000: Property Rights and Museum Practice

This quarter our discussions will focus on ways in which museum practices respond to or are affected by arguments about rights to cultural property.

Conveners: Kimerly Rorschach, Dana Feitler Director, University of Chicago David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, and lecturer in art history, and Ray Fogelson, Anthropology and Psychology

Session 1: Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul Law School, "Museums, the Market and Antiquities."

Session 2: Rob McLaughlin, U of C Anthropology Department, "Refracting Rights Through Material Culture: Implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act"

Session 3: Cora Goldstein, U of C Political Science Department, "Constructing visual culture: the art policies of the Third Reich and OMGUS."

Session 4: Craig Howe, Deputy Assistant Director for Cultural Resources at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, "Sovereignty and Cultural Property Policy in Museums"

Spring Quarter 2000: Measuring Tastes and Values

Conveners: Colm O'Muircheartaigh (Public Policy and NORC) and Lawrence Rothfield (English, Comparative Literature, and faculty director, Cultural Policy Center)

Session 1: John Brewer, English & History, "Trust and the Art Market"

Session 2: "Assessing the Impact of Museums: Claims, Judgements, and Measurements"

Session 3: Tony Bennett, author of "The Birth of the Museum", "Culture, Government and the Social: Twisting the Cultural Turn"