Studiolab: Knowing Through Objects: The World of an Antique Chinese Wedding Bed

3 units

Beds facilitates sleep and relaxation. Across cultures, beds marked social status and drew scrutiny from reformers interested in questions of gender, family, and sexuality. A historical bed might also capture other meanings: its pathways through production, circulation, and consumption illuminates global trading networks. It might allow us to imagine the transmission of craft knowledge, wealth accumulation (or dissipation), and social mobility. The class investigates and restores an antique Chinese wedding bed. This class will combine digital tools with humanistic research methods to facilitate a cultural history that engage questions of intimacy, nuptials, curation and conservation, and trade and cultural exchanges.