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Academic Year 2005/2006

Early American Material Culture: Art, Buildings, and Things in a Colonial Place
HIST 346 FA

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.

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-30-2006

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