In this assignment, Noémie Ndiaye asks students to curate a mini exhibition consisting of three objects. Each student will select objects produced in early modern Europe (or beyond) and organize them around a unifying theme or guiding question that serves as the central focus of their exhibition. 

The accompanying paper should analyze how this selected group of visual materials participates in processes of race-making. The paper should use the following guidelines:

1. Each object should be discussed in detail, with attention to medium, size, use, function, and intended audience.
2. The analysis should also consider how each object engages with its spectators as it invites, involves, or manipulates viewers’ attention and responses. 
3. Students should examine the discourses or visual tropes that each object draws upon, circulates, responds to, or complicates.
4. The paper should then move beyond analysis of individual items to explore what new insights emerge when these objects are placed in dialogue with one another. What forms of tension, resonance, or contradiction arise from their juxtaposition? Ultimately, what does this act of curation make visible about the cultural, aesthetic, or racial dynamics of the period? 

Students are expected to draw on (and fully cite) digital collections and online museum databases. Using these open access collections allows students to explore a broad visual archive, compare materials across geographic regions, and practice critical engagement with digital resources. 

Recommended platforms for student research

(annotated by Noémi Ndiaye)

• Oxford English Dictionary. The ultimate dictionary and the only one you should use in a research paper.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO). Contains almost all books printed in English from Gutenberg through Shakespeare’s lifetime and beyond.
• The Digital Image Collection of the Folger Library. Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. This collection is useful for thinking beyond the textual medium.
• The Catalogue of the Newberry Library exhibition. Seeing Race Before Race. This catalogue is also useful for thinking beyond the textual medium, and for finding connections between plays and visual culture. 
• The Lost Plays Database. Because the early modern plays that we can read today are but a small fraction of the theatrical production of the period, this database is useful for finding out whether some themes captured early modern dramatic imagination more than the extant record tells us.
• Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. The largest available database of Spanish texts from the 16th and 17th century (in Spanish). This is the Spanish equivalent of EEBO. 
• Out of the Wings. Contextualized resources for English-speakers on Spanish plays starting in the early modern period. The resources include short synopses of plays for deciding which plays to read in their entirety.
• Gallica. Digital collection of the French National library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The French equivalent to EEBO and the Folger Digital Collections.
• CESAR. This database contains information on all aspects of the French theater between 1600 and 1800 covering plays, operas, ballets, fairground productions, street performances, etc., whether they were performed or published or merely described in contemporary documents.
• JSTOR, Project Muse, and ProQuest are the main sources of scholarly articles, useful for finding out how other scholars have read the plays you are working on.

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