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Academic Year 2003/2004
Early American Material Culture: Art, Buildings, and Things in a Colonial Place
HIST 346 SP
This upper-level seminar offers an introduction to material culture theory and methodology, as well as deep immersion early American architectural history and the history of early American objects: ceramics, furniture,
metals,
paintings, and works-on-paper. Readings will include prominent works of historical and theoretical scholarship, together with a small handful of recent exhibition catalogues. Foremost among our concerns in this seminar
will be to study, at close range, the uses to which early American history has been put by those who sell objects that routinely bring tens of millions of dollars at auction. Students will not only become acquainted
with
the agendas at work in the acquisition and display of early American things, but also with the imaginative ways in which scholars use those things to elucidate the texture of everyday life in early America.
MAJOR READINGS
Tentative List of Major Readings
David L. Barquist et al., MYER MYERS: JEWISH SILVERSMITH IN COLONIAL NEW YORK (2002).
John Berger, WAYS OF SEEING (1972).
Richard L. Bushman, THE REFINEMENT OF AMERICA:
PERSONS, CITIES, HOUSES
(1992)
James Deetz, IN SMALL THINGS FORGOTTEN: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY AMERICAN LIFE (1977)
Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, eds., NEW ENGLAND BEGINS: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 2 vols (1982)
Robin
Jaffee Frank, LOVE AND LOSS: AMERICAN PO
RTRAIT AND MOURNING MINIATURES (2000)
Thomas Hariot, A BRIEF AND TRUE REPORT OF THE NEW FOUND LAND OF VIRGINIA (ORIG. PUBL 1590)
Graham Hood, THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE IN WILLIAMSBURG: A CULTURAL STUDY (1992)
Allan
I. Ludwig, GRAVEN IMAGES: NEW ENGLA
ND STONECARVING AND ITS SYMBOLS (1966)
EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS
Weekly readings responses; one five- to six-page paper using early Middletown probate records; a second using Middletown gravestones; and a final, fifteen- to twenty-page research paper on a topicūthat is, object, image,
or buildingūof the student's
choice.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS
There will be a day-long field trip to Manhattan, where seminar members will tour the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with senior staff; get a behind-the-scenes-tour of the American departments at
Sotheby's; and meet with the President of
Leigh Keno Antiques, one of the country's foremost dealers in high-style early American furniture.
This seminar counts as a Junior Colloquium in American Studies.
COURSE FORMAT:
Seminar
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Level:
UGRD
Credit:
1
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA CHUM
Grading Mode:
Graded
Prerequisites:
NONE
Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-19-2004
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Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459