Seminar in Historical Analysis (405-0-22)
Topic
Material Culture
Instructors
Kenneth L Alder
847/467-4038
Harris Hall 307
Meeting Info
Harris Hall room 101: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
This course explores diverse approaches to writing history under the rubric of "the material turn." How are our interpretations of the past be transformed by placing material objects at the center of our accounts? Do artifacts have politics? To answer these questions, we will juxtapose several theories of material culture with historical case studies. Our examples will be world-wide, ranging from the Trobriand Islands and early modern Europe to modern America, Asia, and Africa, right up to present-day debates over AI. We will consider the many people involved in the design, production, and use of objects: artisans, engineers, capitalists, laborers, enslaved peoples, children, Luddites, Futurists, and consumers of all stripes, as well as coders, hackers and hobbyists. We will consider the life cycle of banal objects, as well as liminal objects which mediate diverse realms of experience. These perspectives will be examined in light of contending theories of material change: commodity fetishism, the social construction of technology, the anthropology of the gift, gender analysis, evolutionary theory, systems theory, infrastructure studies, and performance studies. The goal of the course is to show how accounts organized around inanimate artifacts can illuminate human histories.
A unique feature of this course is that its assignments are themselves "object lessons," in which students practice various short-form academic genres: a peer review, a book blurb, a speaker introduction, a lay-press book review, an undergraduate lecture outline, a one-book one-TGS proposal, etc. For their final assignment, students write a short review essay organized around a material artifact of their choice.
Learning Objectives
Students will read widely in the historical literature on material culture. They will learn a variety of interpretive strategies from several disciplines (anthropology, sociology, and the humanities) and assess how well these theories can be applied to various time and places—including those times/places which are of greatest interest to them in their own research. They will also be guided in writing in a variety of short academic genres.
Evaluation Method
A variety of short-form academic genres