First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: The Thingliness of Things

(4 Credits)

This course engages a seemingly simple question: What is an object? Relatedly, what is a thing? As a means of illuminating these questions, we will consult everyday objects, theories of various object forms (from our very first loved objects, to commodities, fetishes, even lost things) and literary and artistic representations. One of our challenges will be to learn to read objects both by having them at hand, and by understanding how economic, psychic, and social values shape their visual and material properties. In this process, we will engage the popular view that objects tell us something, first and foremost, about the people who create and use them. We will also encounter the taboo proposition that objects may have an intentionality of their own, and that humans do not dictate the meaning of all things. Readings may include Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena”; Marx, “Commodities”; Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style; Baudrillard, “The Ideological Genesis of Need”; Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.