Eunsong Kim, associate professor of English, writes in “The Politics of Collecting” that she wanted to “explore how objects and collections become valued, and how the ideas linked to the objects are essential for understanding how meaning is managed, distributed, and archived.” In this monograph, Kim follows the linkages between racial capitalism and the development of museum collections, demonstrating how the latter was structured by the former, and how conceptions of artistic innovation and genius were predicated on exploitative practices.