AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE
Professor Miller
545-6791
mmiller@history.umass.edu
Spring 2014
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)
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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.
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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:
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Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture,
http://decorativearts.library.wisc.edu/resources.html
LibGuide: Material Culture, U-Delaware http://guides.lib.udel.edu/materialculture
Center for Material Culture Studies (U-Del) http://www.materialculture.udel.edu/resources.html
SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS:
Monday, Jan 27: Introduction:
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), 61-82
UDRIVE
Frank Trentmann, ‘Materiality in the Future of History: Things, Practices, and Politics’
Journal of British Studies, 48/2 (April 2009), pp. 283-307. UDRIVE
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.
141-157. JSTOR
Sophie White, “Geographies of Slave Consumption,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 45, No. 2/3
(Summer/Autumn 2011), pp. 229-248, JSTOR
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PART ONE: METHODS, MANIFESTOES
Monday, Feb 3: First Things First
Reading:
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.
276-284)
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, 97-149 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.
Reading:
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 UDRIVE
TUESDAY, Feb 18:
Reading:
Approaches to/from the Architectural Record
Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (SELECTIONS). RESERVE
Michael Ann Williams, Homeplace (SELECTIONS). UDRIVE
Annmarie Adams, “The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia,”
in Cromley and Hudgins, ed., Gender, Class and Shelter (Knoxville: U-Tennessee,
1995): 164-178. UDRIVE
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), 15-31.
UDRIVE
PAPER DUE: Assignment #1
Monday, Feb 24: And now for something totally different…
Reading:
Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs RESERVE
PAPER DUE: Assignment #2
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PART TWO: LAB
Monday, March 3: The Material World of New England
MEET AT HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
Reading:
Robert Blair St. George, “Artifacts of Regional Consciousness in the Connecticut River
Valley, 1700- 1780,” 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 http://www.historic-northampton.org/
Monday, March 10: The Material World of New England: Basketry
MEET AT HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
Reading:
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, UDRIVE
March 17 – SPRING BREAK
Monday, March 24: The Material World of New England: Furniture
MEET AT HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
Reading:
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Hannah Barnard’s Chest: Female Property and Identity in
Eighteenth Century New England” in Through a Glass Darkly (UNC, 1997), 238-273.
UDRIVE
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
MEET AT HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
Reading:
Cheryl Buckley, Hazel Clark, “Conceptualizing Fashion in Everyday Lives. Design Issues , Vol.
28, No. 4 (Autumn 2012) , pp. 18-28, 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, 1760-1810,” 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 1790-1930. Another good bet is Joan
Severa, Dressed for the Photographer.
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PART THREE: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Monday, April 7: Material Culture and the study of Women’s History
Reading:
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, 1700-1830 UDRIVE
[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
Reading: 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.
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