Groppe, AlisonMoore, Lee2022-02-182022-02-182022-02-18https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27064The PRC museum is becoming a space for the construction of a national identity grounded in an ethnicized notion of Han Chineseness. This dissertation traces the origins of the museum in the Chinese-speaking world, exploring how the conceptualization of the museum shifted from the universal to the nationalistic mode. In the history chapters (Chapters II and III), I explore how both discursive and built museums were initially conceptualized in the universal mode, as epistemological spaces where knowledge was conceived of in universal terms, before moving to the nationalistic mode, where knowledge was understood to produce the Chinese nation. In Chapter IV, I examine how the museum is used to construct a Chineseness grounded in an ethnicized understanding of a Han Chinese identity by close reading two museums to elucidate the extent to which the nation is authorized as the sole subject of history in PRC museums.en-USAll Rights Reserved.Chinese MuseumsMuseum StudiesElectronic Thesis or Dissertation