Readings for March 26

For this week, respond to the reading of your choice. Consider the following question in relation to the reading that you choose: What can we learn by looking at objects/art through the lens of race?

Responses for Wednesday, March 5

This week, consider the way in which art historians have considered the attribute of artistic "style" as a method of understanding material culture. Where does this branch of material culture scholarship intersect with what we have already studied and where does it diverge? Does it offer the art historian a particularly "art historical" material culture methodology to work with?

Respond to: Jonathan Prown and Richard Miller, “The Rococo, the Grotto, and the Philadelphia High Chest,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Chipstone, 1996), 105-136.

Responses for Wednesday, February 27

This week you are reading about material culture and gentility, class, and refinement. Respond to any of the readings that you wish. Remember, don't get bogged down in the details.

Responses for Wednesday, February 20

This week's readings use the methodological framework of consumption as a way to understand material goods. The writings of T. H. Breen reconsider long-held assumptions about what painting, particularly portrait painting, meant in eighteenth-century colonial America. William Rathje and Cullen Murphy challenge us to look at the leavings, literally the garbage, of a culture or society as a valid form of material culture inquiry.

Please respond to :

T. H. Breen, “The Meaning of ‘Likeness’: Portrait-Painting in an Eighteenth-Century Consumer Society,” in The Portrait in Eighteenth-Century America, edited by Ellen G. Miles (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), 37-60.

and

William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Chapters 1 and 3, Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 1-29 and 53-78.

Responses for Wednesday, February 13

This week you are reading Jules David Prown and Kenneth Haltman, editors, American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000). All the essays in this book are based on Jules Prown's method for looking at objects. You should respond to:

Sara Laurel Holstein, "Sewing and Sowing: Cultural Continuity in an Amish Quilt," pp. 93-108.

Daisann McLane, "Unwrapping the bwat sekre: The Secrets of a Haitian Money Box," pp. 109-128.

AND one other essay of your choice.

You should also pay careful attention to Jules Prown's article as an example of the idea of object as metaphor.

In your responses you should consider the evidence that the writer presents for his/her interpretation of the object. You should question whether the interpretation is valid. You should determine whether you think the metaphors that each author finds in each object are acceptable.


PLEASE, remember that these posts are a serious portion of this class and one means by which I will determine your ultimate grade. Stay on point and present for the class usable insights or thoughts.

Responses for Wednesday, February 6

This week the readings propose methodologies and explore methodological problems in relationship to the study of material culture. You should respond to the following two articles:

Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” in Material Life in America, 1600-1860, edited by Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 17-37.

Dell Upton, “Form and User: Style, Mode, Fashion, and the Artifact,” in Living in a Material World: Canadian and American Approaches to Material Culture (St. John, Newfoundland: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1991), 156-169.

Prown sets forth a widely used methodology for object study. Upton, on the other hand, confronts some problems in terminology with regard to studies of consumption or use. They are very different articles. Do your best with the Upton, it is the more difficult of the two to understand.

In your responses this week, consider how these articles deal with (or don't deal with) the problems of material culture that we talked about in class last Wednesday. Also consider whether you think the authors' methodological investigations ultimately help the material culturist to shed his/her cultural biases or not.

Responses for Wednesday, January 30

Please respond to the following readings:

Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison, “Shaping the Field: The Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Material Culture,” in American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field, edited by Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison, (Winterthur, Delaware: Winterthur Museum, 1997), 1-20.

Dell Upton, “The City as Material Culture,” in The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, Essays in Honor of James Deetz, edited by Anne Yentsch and Mary Beaudry (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1992), 51-74.


Keep in mind that your responses should do two things. 1) You should include a short summary of the author’s argument and/or purpose, and 2) you should include observations, questions, and points of discussion for the class.

You may always express your own opinions and you may compare specific ideas that you find in the reading to your own outside knowledge or experience. You may want to consider if or how the ideas in the readings may be useful to you or how they might be applied to the work/philosophy of the contemporary artist.

Click on the comments section of this post to add your response and read the thoughts of your classmates. Remember to post before Monday at noon and check back to read all the comments before class. Please sign your responses with an identifiable nickname so that we all know who has been responding and so that I can give the proper person credit for her/his ideas! Happy blogging.