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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: H. Glenn Penny, "In Humboldt's Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Description: The Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects collected from around the globe. In Humboldt's Shadow tells the story of the German scientists and adventurers who, inspired by Alexander von Humboldt's inclusive vision of the world, traveled the earth in pursuit of a total history of humanity. It also details the fate of their museum, which they hoped would be a scientists' workshop, a place where a unitary history of humanity might emerge.H. Glenn Penny shows how these early German ethnologists assembled va...