AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE. Professor Miller Spring Mondays, 2:30-5:00 Herter 640

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1 AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE Professor Miller Spring Mondays, 2:30-5:00 Herter 640 A method based on the document is prejudiced; fated to neglect the majority of people, for they were non-literate, and, within the bounds of literacy, to neglect the majority of people, for they did not write. Our Shared Purpose Henry Glassie Folk Housing in Middle Virginia The aim of this course is to introduce students to study of history from things, or material culture. Throughout the semester, we will attend both to the methods by which material culture can be harnessed for historical analysis and to significant genres or avenues of inquiry undertaken by scholars working with material culture sources. Students will gain familiarity with the most significant literature in material culture studies, major trends in material culture historiography and methodology, and the leading figures who have given the field its shape and direction. Because my interests tend to center on the US before the Civil War, and because that is the strength of area museum collections, the course will focus on that period, though students are invited and encouraged to range more widely in their written assignments. Assignments: Readings, Writings, Discussions Readings: include Book-length readings that are recommended for purchase (and are also on RESERVE) Ken Ames, Death in the Dining Room and other Tales of Victorian Culture (Phila: Temple University Press, 1992) Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina Press, 1998) NOTE: this book is also available electronically from the UMass library website. Richard Bushman, Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (NY: Vintage, 1993) David Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America (Phila, Penn Press, 2010) Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard, 2012) NOTE/EXCEPTION: this book is not on reserve, but is also available electronically from the UMass library website. Sarah H. Hill: Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and their Basketry (UNC Press, 1997) Other books we will consult: Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, has been placed on RESERVE William Hosley, The Great River, has been placed on RESERVE Styles & Vickery, Gender, Taste & Material Culture has been placed on RESERVE Writings: There will be three short writing assignments and one major piece of writing. Assignment #1, due February 18: in five pages, compare the methodological choices across the assigned readings, and assess the relationship of those choices to the author s subject matter and argument. 1

2 Assignment #2, due February 24: in five pages, review Robert Blair St. George s Conversing by Signs. This paper caps Part I of the course, which aims to consider the several landmark statements and illustrations of methodology; this being so, your review should engage with specificity the other authors read before this date. To what degree does St. George rely on, and depart from, scholarship that has come before? Assignment #3, due March 31, caps our work at Historic Northampton. We will be spending four weeks in those collections, talking about regional style more generally and gaining familiarity with three genres of material culture: baskets, furniture and clothing. During this month, you will work with classmates to create an online microexhibit using objects we encounter during those visits. Assignment #4, due the last day of class, is a significant historiographical essay (shoot for around 20 pages) on the Material Culture of. Your topic could be The Material Culture of Faith, The Material Culture of Civil Rights, The Material Culture of Class, The Material Culture of Medicine, The Material Culture of Childhood, The Material Culture of Sports any topic will do so long as it is broad and encompassing. The aim of this paper is to discover and assess the ways in which material culture analysis has, and/or could, contribute to a study of wider scholarly interest. Try to choose a topic that allows you to engage at least a dozen or so titles. Resources Over the course of the semester you may want to check out the below: Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture, LibGuide: Material Culture, U-Delaware Center for Material Culture Studies (U-Del) Monday, Jan 27: Introduction: SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS: Readings: Henry Glassie, Meaningful Things and Appropriate Myths: The Artifact s Place in American Studies, in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America RESERVE Harvey Green, Cultural History s Material Turn, Cultural History 1.1 (2012), Frank Trentmann, Materiality in the Future of History: Things, Practices, and Politics Journal of British Studies, 48/2 (April 2009), pp Bernard L. Herman, Tabletop conversations: material culture and everyday life in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, in Styles and Vickery, Gender, Taste and Material Culture RESERVE Ann Smart Martin, Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 28, No. 2/3 (Summer - Autumn, 1993), pp JSTOR Sophie White, Geographies of Slave Consumption, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 45, No. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 2011), pp , JSTOR 2

3 Monday, Feb 3: First Things First PART ONE: METHODS, MANIFESTOES E. McClung Fleming, Artifact Study: A Proposed Model, Winterthur Portfolio Vol. 9, (1974) JSTOR (feel free to see also his essay Early American Decorative Arts as Social Documents, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Sep., 1958), pp ) Jules David Prown, Style as Evidence, Winterthur Portfolio Vol.15, No.3 (Autumn, 1980), JSTOR Philip D. Zimmerman, Workmanship as Evidence: A Model for Object Study, Winterthur Portfolio Vol.16, No.4 (Winter, 1981) JSTOR Ken Ames, Words to Live by, Death in the Dining Room, RESERVE Assignment: Browse the Winterthur Portfolio and the Journal of Design History. Come to class ready to share 2 specific examples that suggest to you the most effective methods currently in play. Monday, Feb 10: FIELD TRIP: The Refinement of America. Meet at Historic Deerfield. Bushman, Refinement of America RESERVE Briann G. Greenfield, Highboys and High Culture: Adopting an American Aesthetic in Deerfield, Massachusetts in Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-Century New England TUESDAY, Feb 18: Approaches to/from the Architectural Record Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (SELECTIONS). RESERVE Michael Ann Williams, Homeplace (SELECTIONS). Annmarie Adams, The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia, in Cromley and Hudgins, ed., Gender, Class and Shelter (Knoxville: U-Tennessee, 1995): Dell Upton, Black and White Landscapes in Early Virginia in St. George, Material Life in America RESERVE Marla Miller, "Labor and Liberty in the Age of Refinement: Gender, Class and the Built Environment," in Kenneth Breisch and Alison K. Hoagland, ed., Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), PAPER DUE: Assignment #1 Monday, Feb 24: And now for something totally different Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs RESERVE PAPER DUE: Assignment #2 3

4 PART TWO: LAB Monday, March 3: The Material World of New England Robert Blair St. George, Artifacts of Regional Consciousness in the Connecticut River Valley, , and Kevin M. Sweeney, From Wilderness to Arcadian Vale, in Hosley, The Great River [and browse rest of volume] RESERVE This will be our first of several visits to Historic Northampton. Today we will get acquainted with the collections in general and see how they confirm/contradict the major analyses by Bushman and St. George. Please familiarize yourself with the site via Monday, March 10: The Material World of New England: Basketry Nan Wolverton, A Precarious Living : Basket Making and Related Crafts Among New England Indians in Calloway and Salisbury, Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience, March 17 SPRING BREAK Monday, March 24: The Material World of New England: Furniture Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Hannah Barnard s Chest: Female Property and Identity in Eighteenth Century New England in Through a Glass Darkly (UNC, 1997), Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods Preface, Chapters 2 & 5; RESERVE [and Review Zimmerman, Workmanship as Evidence ] EDUCATE YOUR EYE: In advance of this class, spend some time browsing online so you can begin to get a sense of the evolution of chair styles, from Williams & Mary through the Victorian age. Monday, March 31: The Material World of New England: Dress Cheryl Buckley, Hazel Clark, Conceptualizing Fashion in Everyday Lives. Design Issues, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Autumn 2012), pp , JSTOR Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Cloth, Clothing and Early American Social History, Dress 18 (1991) UMass Library Joan Severa and Merrill Horswill, Costume as Material Culture, Dress 15 (1989) UMass Library Marla Miller, Clothing and Consumers in Rural New England, , in The Needle s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution: SCHOLARWORKS EDUCATE YOUR EYE: In advance of this class, spend some time browsing online so you can begin to get a sense of the evolution of style, especially b/w Another good bet is Joan Severa, Dressed for the Photographer. 4

5 PART THREE: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Monday, April 7: Material Culture and the study of Women s History Sarah H. Hill: Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and their Basketry Ellen Hartigan-O Connor, Collaborative Consumption and the Politics of Choice in Early American Port Cities, in Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, [Review Adams, Williams, Miller, Ulrich and other readings that engaged women s history] Monday, April 14: NO CLASS: USE THIS TIME TO WORK ON YOUR FINAL PAPER, AND ALSO PAPER DUE: Assignment #3 WEDNESDAY, April 23: New Directions Forward Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard, 2012). Professor Anderson will be visiting class, so make time to give this a good close read and formulate good questions for her, about her work, new directions in the field, etc. Monday, April 28: FINAL PAPERS DUE: Class will be reports-out on your individual papers. 5

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