Material Culture (syllabus, 2025) (original) (raw)

This graduate seminar provides an introduction to the study of material culture. This is an enormous topic that can be approached from many different angles. Over the course of the semester, we will sample a number of these options, dipping our toes here and there into a lively, multi-disciplinary conversation about the relationship between humans and the broader material world. We will engage with the work of historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, geographers, philosophers, political theorists, and more, all of them committed to the interrogation of specific case studies but many also seeking to break new theoretical ground or clarify the particular methodological challenges that one encounters when approaching the world of things. Our itinerary will include excursions into object biography, thing theory, new materialism, archaeologies of the contemporary, social memory, affect, cultural heritage conflict, the ethics of museum display, and recent efforts to more fully incorporate non-human living beings in the stories that we tell about the past and present. Throughout, our attention will be focused squarely on the historical dimension, that is, on the connection between material culture, the writing of history, and the politics of the past.