TRANSNATIONAL ZONES OF CONTACT AND CRITICAL LITERACY: EDUCATIONAL USES OF THE IMMIGRATION MUSEUM

Abstract

This paper analyses the pedagogical agendas of immigration museums, which have emerged in recent decades as key educational sites for transcultural education. Through discussion of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (New York), and the Melbourne Immigration Museum (Australia), I identify two pedagogical narratives which seek to produce intercultural empathy through engagement with individual experiences: personalisation and universalisation. I further consider the ways in which critical educators can make use of the online and onsite resources provided by the museums, and possibilities for adaptation and extension of a critical approach to historical accounts of transcultural contact and conflict.