Twenty Years of Material Culture at the ASA
Recently, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, the Material Culture Caucus of the American
Studies Association (ASA) compiled a list of panels sponsored by the Caucus at ASA annual
conferences. The list follows. At each conference, other panels also dealt with issues in the field,
but these are not included here. This list, however, suggests some of the turns in approach to the
study of objects over this time.
For each year, the list provides the conference theme, location, and panel details. There are also
notes about the publication of papers from the panel and indications where information is missing.
The list was compiled by Catherine Whalen and Shirley Wajda. We welcome comments that further
amplify this list, including corrections and answers to queries. Send them to Debby Andrews,
convener of the Caucus, at
dandrews@udel.edu
2014. The Fun and the Fury: New Dialectics of Pleasure and Pain In the Post-American
Century, Los Angeles, California
“Twenty Years, Twenty Questions to Ask an Object” (a video of the session is available at
http://www.artbabble.org/search/twenty%20questions )
CHAIR: Deborah Andrews, University of Delaware
PANELISTS:
Sarah Ann Carter, Harvard University
Estella Chung, Hillwood Museum
Catherine Whalen, Bard Graduate Center
Ellen Gruber Garvey, New Jersey City University
COMMENT: Deborah Andrews, University of Delaware
2013. Beyond the Logic of Debt, Toward an Ethics of Collective Dissent, Washington, DC
About Something or for Someone? Curatorial Ethics and Cultural Debts (session held at the
Hillwood Museum)
CHAIR: Sarah Anne Carter, Chipstone Foundation
PANELISTS:
Nicole Belolan, University of Delaware
Estella M. Chung, Hillwood Museum
Jenn Sichel, University of Chicago
1
Jonathan Frederick Walz, Rollins College
Credit/Debit, Fealty/Faith: Doing, Subverting, and Archiving America's Business from the
Antebellum Era to Jim Crow
CHAIR: Wendy A. Woloson, Rutgers University, Camden
PAPERS:
Christopher Mark Brady Allison, Harvard University
“The Materiality of American Trust: The R.G. Dun Credit Report Volumes”
Shirley E. Thompson, University of Texas, Austin
“As Though They Meant Something: Insurance Documents, Indebtedness, and AfricanAmerican Freedom”
Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, University of Texas, Austin
“The First Cut is the Deepest: Financial Records and the Indebted Archive”
COMMENT: Wendy A. Woloson, Rutgers University, Camden
2012. Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Past, Present, and Future, San Juan, Puerto Rico
The Dust of Empire: Material Culture and the Circulation of Power's Remains
CHAIR: Courtney Fullilove, Wesleyan University
PAPERS:
Michelle Morgan, Yale University
“Expressive Materiality and the Racial Implications of Coal in the Antebellum United States”
Katherine Lennard, University of Michigan
“Dust is Mostly Flakes of Skin: Lewis Powell and the Substance of Violence”
Christopher Kramaric, Yale University
“Out of Time and Place: Dust and the Working Poor in 1930s America”
Megan Bayles, University of California, Davis
“Human Remains: Progress and Decay in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry”
COMMENT: Courtney Fullilove, Wesleyan University
Whales, Balloons, and Boxcars: Imperial Objects in the Long Nineteenth Century
CHAIR: Sarah Anne Carter, Harvard University
PAPERS:
Ben Bascom, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“The Nineteenth-Century Imperial Balloon: Race, Class, and Spectacle”
2
Jamie L. Jones, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
“The Pioneer Inland Whaling Association: A Whale, a Ship, and the Limits of Maritime
Frontier”
John F. Lennon, University of South Florida
“The Parasitic Rider: The Hobo, Empire, and Boxcarpolitics”
COMMENT: Sarah Anne Carter, Harvard University
2011. Imagination, Reparation, Transformation, Baltimore, MD
Imagined Overload: Material Cultures of Excess and Minimalism
CHAIR: Susan Strasser, University of Delaware
PAPERS:
Bess Williamson, University of Delaware
“Does This Chair Make Me Look Fat? Body Size, Furniture Size, and Style in TwentiethCentury American Design”
Stephanie Kolberg, University of Texas, Austin
“Of Golden Eagles and Sarcophagi: The Spectacularized Terrain of a Carnival Cruise Ship”
Donald Snyder, University of Maryland
“Hoarding Knowledge: Excess and the Ethel Index”
Katherine Feo Kelly, University of Texas, Austin
“Transformative Simplicity: Real Simple Magazine and the Gendered Culture of Organization”
COMMENT: Catherine Whalen, Bard Graduate Center
Objects of Learning: Material Culture, Imaginative Pedagogy, and the Transformation of American
Childhood, 1880–1980
CHAIR: Miriam Forman-Brunell, University of Missouri, Kansas City
PAPERS:
Sarah Anne Carter, Harvard University
“Developing the Historical Sense: The Material Culture of the Historical Imagination, 1880–
1920”
Robin Bernstein, Harvard University
“Raggedy Ann and the Racial Scripts of Book-Doll Combinations”
Rebecca Onion, University of Texas, Austin
“Reality in the Basement: Science Sets, Home Laboratories, and the Market for the Modern
Mind”
Victoria Cain, New York University (NY)
3
“From Docents to Discovery Zones: Interactive Objects in Twentieth-Century Science
Museums”
COMMENT: The Audience
2010. Crisis, Chains, and Change: American Studies for the 21st Century, San Antonio, Texas
Interpreting Objects: Presenting What and How We Know in Changing Times
CHAIR: Deborah Andrews, University of Delaware
PANELISTS:
Sarah Carter, Harvard University
Ethan Lasser, Chipstone Foundation
Estella Chung, Hillwood Museum
Shirley Teresa Wajda, Connecticut Humanities Council
2009. Practices of Citizenship, Sustainability, and Belonging, Washington, DC
The Citadel of All Truths: Museum Staff and Academics Offer New Approaches to Domesticity and
Citizenship
PANELISTS:
Paul R. Mullins
Cindy R. Lobel
Megan Searing Young
Psyche Williams-Forson
2008. Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in Theory and Practice,
Albuquerque, NM
Craft at the Crossroads Roundtable
CHAIR: Emily Godbey, Iowa State University
PANELISTS:
Emily Godbey, Iowa State University
Barbara E. Martinson, University of Minnesota
Elysia Poon, University of New Mexico
4
COMMENT: Leah Dilworth, Long Island University
2007. America Aqui: Transhemispheric Visions and Community Connections, Philadelphia, PA
Art, Property, and the Public Good: Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic and Cultural Patrimony
Session took place at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
CHAIR: Shirley Wajda, Kent State University (OH)
PANELISTS:
Kathleen Adair Foster, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary (VA)
Elizabeth Milroy, Wesleyan University (CT)
Steven Conn, Ohio State University, Columbus (OH)
2006. The United States from Inside and Out, Oakland, CA
Hot Dish: In Honor of Karal Ann Marling's Work in Visual and Material Culture Studies
Oakland Museum of California (SRC7) Oakland Museum of California
CHAIR: Erika Doss, University of Colorado, Boulder
PAPERS:
Colleen Sheehy, University of Minnesota
“The Erotics of Karal Ann Marling”
Simon J. Bronner, The Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
“Objects of Desire: Karal Ann Marling's Fetishes”
Derham Groves, University of Melbourne
“Televisionary”
COMMENT: John Wetenhall, Ringling Museum of Art
Karal Ann Marling, University of Minnesota
2005. Groundwork: Space and Place in American Cultures, Washington, DC
Primary Places I: Material Culture Resources at the Library of Congress
Labor, Emotion and Material Culture in the Making of the Nineteenth-Century “Home”
CHAIR: Wendy Gamber, Indiana University
PAPERS:
Brandy Parris, University of Washington
5
“Household Duties Necessary to Social Happiness”
Elizabeth White Nelson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Sustaining Nourishment: Images and Artifacts of 19th-Century Domestic Economy”
Robin Veder, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
“Pastoralized Labor: Love and Knowledge in the Marketing and Work of Nineteenth-Century
Parlor Gardening”
Helen Sheumaker, Miami University
“Acts of Charity: Women and Secondhand Goods in Nineteenth-Century America”
COMMENT: Wendy Gamber, Indiana University
2004. Crossroads of Cultures, Atlanta, GA
Who's Keeping House?: Interpreting Servitude in Historic House Museums
CHAIR: Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary
PANELISTS:
Dianne Swann-Wright, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.
John Tschirch, The Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, Rhode Island
Elizabeth O'Leary, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Marymont Foundation
COMMENT: Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary
2003. Violence and Belonging, Hartford, CT
Cultural Diversity in the Material Culture of American Cemeteries: New Approaches/New
Directions
CHAIR: Janet Headley, Loyola College of Maryland
PANELISTS:
Kerry Dean Carso, Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library
Rachel Malcolm-Woods, James Madison University
Cynthia Mills, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Penelope Myrtle Kelsey, Rochester Institute of Technology
Elizabeth Klimasmith, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Rebecca Reynolds, Forest Hills Educational Trust, Boston
COMMENT: Kevin R. McNamara, University of Houston-Clear Lake
6
2002. The Local and the Global & Recovery Project/Redefining “Nuestra América,” Houston,
TX
[We’re missing information for this year]
2001 Multiple Publics/Civic Voices, Washington, DC
Not for Sale: Determining Personal Meaning in Consumer Society
CHAIR: Ann Smart Martin, Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
PAPERS:
Beverly Gordon, Environment, Textiles, and Design Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Consumer Goods as Raw Materials: Creating Imaginary Worlds with Consumer Cast-offs
Katherine C. Grier, Department of History, University of South Carolina
Pets: Goods, Gifts, Persons
Katharine Martinez, Fine Arts Library of Harvard College Library, Harvard University
Visual Culture of Culturine?: Attitudes toward Photomechanical Images, 1880-1920
COMMENT: Ann Smart Martin
2001.
[We’re missing information for this year]
2000. American Studies in the World/The World in American Studies, Detroit, MI
Death, Memory, and Material Culture
CHAIR: David Morgan, Valparaiso University
PAPERS:
Derrick Cartwright, Musée d’Art Américain , Giverny
“Dead and Going to Die”: Lewis Payne and the Aesthetics of Execution in Nineteenth-Century
America”
Ann Schofield, University of Kansas, Lawrence
“Performing Grief: The Changing Respectability of Mourning in Turn-of-the-Century America”
Gary Laderman Emory University
“The Embalming Century”
Erika Doss, University of Colorado
“Death and Memory in the Public Sphere: The Visual and Material Culture of Grief in
Contemporary America”
COMMENT: David Morgan, Valparaiso University
7
1999. Crossing Borders/Crossing Centuries, Montréal, Québec
It's a Good(s) Thing: Martha Stewart and the Refinement of America
CHAIR: Mary Corbin Sies, University of Maryland
PANELISTS:
Sarah Abigail Leavitt, Women of the West Museum
“It Was Always a ‘Good Thing’: A Historical Context for Martha Stewart”
Shirley Teresa Wajda, Kent State University
“K-Martha”
Amy Bentley, New York University
“Martha's Food”
Matthew G. Hyland, College of William and Mary
“Martha Stewart's Living Landscapes”
Mary Anne Beecher, Iowa State University
“Hand Made and Home Grown: The Phenomenology of Martha Stewart”
Karal Ann Marling, University of Minnesota
“A Very Martha Christmas to You!”
COMMENT: The Audience
NOTE: Papers from this session were published as the “Martha Stewart Roundtable,” Special Issue
of American Studies 42, no. 2 (Summer 2001)
1998. American Studies and the Question of Empire: Histories, Cultures and Practices, Seattle,
WA
[We’re missing information for this year]
1997. Going Public: Defining Public Culture(s) in the Americas, Washington, DC
Race, Material Culture and American Studies
CHAIR: Mary Corbin Sies, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland
PAPERS:
Paul R. Mullins, George Mason University
“Racializing Materialism: An Archaeology of African-American Consumption and Whiteness,
1850-1930”
Kimberly Wallace Sanders, Spelman College
“Playing the Part: Black Dolls and Nineteenth Century African-American Material Culture”
Theodore C. Landsmark, Boston University
8
“Assessing the Authenticity and Authority of Collections of Nineteenth-Century African
American Vernacular Arts and Crafts”
Psyche A. Williams, University of Maryland
“Interpreting History through African American Foodways”
COMMENT: Michael Aaron Rockland, Rutgers University
1996. Global Migration, American Cultures, and the State, Kansas City, MO
Workshop: High Tech Teaching and Outreach--World Wide Web Applications for Material and
Visual Culture
MODERATOR: Thomas Ryan, University of Delaware
PRESENTERS:
Jo B. Paoletti, University of Maryland
“Tapping Visual Resources: The MESL and Caprina Projects”
Terry Gips, University of Maryland
“Links, Pathways, and Constructions: Creative and Critical Uses of the World Wide Web”
Ann Denkler, David Silver and Psyche Williams, University of Maryland
“Virtual Greenbelt: Adventures in Teaching and Outreach Using the World Wide Web”
Andrew Connors, National Museum of American Art
“Exploring Stories Behind the Images: Bringing Latino Art and Artists to the Schools”
COMMENTS: The Audience
1995. Toward a Common Ground, Pittsburgh, PA
Roundtable: Gendered Spaces and Aesthetics
CHAIR: Katherine C. Grier, University of Utah
PANELISTS:
Cynthia Brandimarte, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
“Gender, Space, and Tea Rooms”
Caroline Brucken, George Washington University
“Creating and Engendering Public Space: The First American Luxury Hotels, 1825-1860”
Katharine Martinez, Stanford University
“The American Home as Exhibition Space”
Jan Jennings, Cornell University
“Women's Walls”
Abigail A. Van Slyck, University of Arizona
9
“Segregated Spaces”
NOTE: Some papers from this panel were published in the “Gendered Spaces and Aesthetics”
Special Issue, Winterthur Portfolio 31, no. 4 (1996), ed. Katherine C. Grier
10