Material Culture

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Studying material culture requires historians to move beyond familiar written documents as sources and to consider in addition the evidence offered by images and objects. It is an approach to the past that is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on art history and anthropology as well as changes within economic and cultural history. It also pushes us to ask fresh questions about the structures of everyday life, the meanings that people attached to possessions and consumption, and how these changed over time. Although the core of the syllabus for this course will focus on Europe from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, the history of material culture is an excellent platform for developing a comparative approach to other places and times. There will be some weeks during the semester when members of the class will focus on and present materials of their own choosing. Students will be encouraged to seek out sources that speak to their own interests across geographical and temporal fields.