This is an innovative interdisciplinary book about objects and people within museums and galleries. It addresses fundamental issues of human sensory, emotional and aesthetic experience of objects. The chapters explore ways and contexts in which things and people mutually interact, and raise questions about how objects carry meaning and feeling, the distinctions between objects and persons, particular qualities of the museum as context for person-object engagements, and the active and embodied role of the museum visitor.

Museum Materialities is divided into three...

Museum Objects provides a set of readings that together create a distinctive emphasis and perspective on the objects which lie at the heart of interpretive practice in museums, material culture studies and everyday life.

"Sandra Dudley brings unique and valuable insights into the field of forced migration both through her study of the Karenni refugees in Thailand, an overlooked group of refugees who have fled dire circumstances of counter/insurgency and destruction, and a material culture disciplinary lens. This is an eloquently composed text with high scholarly merits." - Hazel Lang, Australian National University

Focusing on the highly diverse Karenni refugee population living in camps on the Thai-Burma border, this innovative book explores materiality, embodiment, memory, imagination, and identity...