Spring 2010 - Syllabus
TUESDAY 4-6:30
LOC: Kolmar Seminar Room
Dr. Cindy Ott
cott3@slu.edu
office location: Humanities 110
Office hours: Tuesday 10-1
ASTD 593.01: Object Lessons: Introduction to Material Culture Studies
The Stuff of life: chairs, can openers, jewelry, cars, and even fruits and vegetables. And the stuff
they are made of: wood, metal, gems, and plastic. Americans are immersed in a material world.
People work, entertain, acknowledge anniversaries, conduct and commemorate war, and even die
(for those who are buried) with things. They spend countless dollars and hours designing,
producing and consuming objects. What can this great production of stuff tell us about history
and cultures that written sources cannot? How can we unravel the keys to their meanings?
In this class, students will study the theory and practice of material culture studies. Students will
learn how to use objects as sources for historical and cultural analyses and how to decipher ideas
and meanings embedded in a variety of artifacts, from souvenirs to plastic pink flamingos. We
will especially focus on museum objects, examining how an object – or set of objects - can
communicate history and cultures to the public, and how an object is transformed from mundane
houseware to a precious icon when placed within an exhibit case. Students will put theory to
practice by working with and analyzing material objects and exhibitions for their class
assignments. Class field trips will be scheduled throughout the term.
Week 1 (Jan 12): Introduction
Course Overview
Slide preview of object lessons
“Garbage Dreams” film viewing at Missouri History Museum 7pm
Week 2 (Jan 19): Material Culture Theory & Method: Style as Evidence
Readings:
-Jules Prown, “Style as Evidence,” Winterthur Portfolio 15 (Autumn 1980), pp. 197-210.
(www.jstor.org)
-Jules David Prown and Kenneth Haltman, eds., American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture
(Michigan State Unviersity Press, 2000)
Week 3 (Jan 26): Material Culture Theory & Method: The Thing Theory
Readings:
-Bill Brown, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago, 2003)
Week 4 (Feb 2): Material Culture & Colonial History
Readings:
-Robert St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press,
1988), Part One: Method and Meaning and Part Two: The Production and Control of Property
Week 5 (Feb 9): Material Culture & Postcolonial Studies
Readings:
Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner, eds. Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in
Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
EXHIBIT PROPOSAL DUE
Feb 14 (Sun): Lessons from the Jim Crow Museum – lecture at Missouri History Museum
1:30pm
Feb 17 (Wed): American Indian Art and Iconography – gallery talk at Kemper Art
Museum, WashU, 5pm
Week 6 (Feb 16): Material Culture & Gender
Readings:
Thorstein Veblen, “Conspicuous Consumption,” in The Theory of the Leisure Class (Dover,
1994: Macmillian, 1899), pp. 43-62
-Elizabeth White Nelson, Market Sentiments: Middle Class Market Culture in NineteenthCentury America (Smithsonian, 2004)
Week 7 (Feb 23): Material Objects & Cultural Identity
Readings:
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an
American Myth (Vintage, 2002; reprint)
Week 8 (Mar 2): World History Through a Single Object
Readings:
Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World (Plume, 2008)
EXHIBITION REVIEW DUE
Week 9: SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS
Week 10 (Mar 16): Museum Controversies & Contested Objects
Readings:
-Steven Dubin, “Museums as Contested Sites,” in Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in
the American Museum (NYU, 1999), pp.1-17.
“The West as America” National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution exhibition:
-William Truetner, ed., The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier
(Smithsonian, 1991) (exhibition catalog)
-Steven Dubin, “A Matter of Perspective: Revisionist History and The West as America,” in
Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum (NYU, 1999), pp. 152-185.
Roger B. Stein, “Visualizing Conflict in “The West as America,” The Public Historian 14
(Summer 1992), pp. 85-91. (www.jstor.org)
-Bryan Wolf, “How the West Was Hung, Or, When I Hear the Word “Culture” I Take Out My
Checkbook,” American Quarterly 44 (Sep 1992), pp. 418-438. (www.jstor.org)
“Enola Gay” National Art and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution exhibition,
-Richard H. Kohn, “History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution’s
Enola Gay Exhibition,” The Journal of American History 82 (Dec 1995), pp. 1036-1063.
(www.jstor.org)
-Edward T. Linenthal, “Struggling with History and Memory,” The Journal of American History
82 (Dec 1995), pp. 1094-1101. (www.jstor.org)
-Mike Wallace, “The Battle of the Enola Gay,” Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), pp. 270-318.
National Museum of American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, opened 2005.
-Nancy M. Mithlo, “Red Man’s Burden”: The Politics of Inclusion in Museum Settings,”
American Indian Quarterly 28 (2004), pp. 743-763. (muse.jhu.edu)
-Evan Maurer, “Presenting the American Indian: From Europe to America,” in David Penney,
The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures (NMAI,
2000), pp. 15-28.
-James D. Nason, “’Our’ Indians: The Unidimensional Indian In the Disembodied Past,” in
David Penney, The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native
Cultures (NMAI, 2000), pp. 29-46.
-David W. Penney, “The Poetics of Museum Representations: Tropes of Recent American Indian
Art Exhibitions,” in The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native
Cultures (NMAI, 2000).
-Edward Rothstein, “Museum Review; Museum With an American Indian Voice,” The New
York Times, Sep 21, 2004.
-Edward Rothstein, “Who Should Tell History: The Tribes or the Museums?,” The New York
Times, Dec 21, 2004.
-Christopher Shea, “Nonhegemonic Curating,” The New York Times Magazine (Dec 12, 2004).
-Amanda J. Cobb, “The National Museum of the American Indian as Cultural Sovereignty,”
American Quarterly 57, no.2 (June 2005), pp. 485-506. (muse.jhu.edu)
Week 11 (Mar 23): Material Culture & Women’s Studies
Readings:
Alison J. Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Smithsonian, 1999)
Week 12 (Mar 30): Material Culture & Consumer Culture
Readings:
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post-War
America (Vintage, 2003)
Week 13 (Apr 6): Natural Objects
Readings:
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World (Random House, 2001)
Week 14 (Apr 13): Material Objects & Personal Identity
Readings:
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (Knopf, 2009)
Film: Everything’s Illuminated
PAPER DRAFT DUE
Week 15 (Apr 20): Too Much Stuff: Consumerism & Garbage
Readings:
Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (Holt, 2000)
Week 16 (Apr 27): Student Presentations
Spring 2010
ASTD 593.01: Introduction Material Culture Studies
Cindy Ott
Course Requirements
Grading:
15% - 3-page exhibition review
15% - 3-page response paper & lead class discussion
10% - Paper proposal
10% - Paper draft
35% - Final Project & Presentation
15% - Class Participation
The course will center on class discussions of assigned readings and visual and material objects
brought to class, student projects, and museum visits. Students are expected to attend all classes,
to have read the material, and to be prepared to discuss it. Your active attention and participation
is needed to create lively class discussions.
Readings will include scholarly works that describe theories and methods of material culture
studies, analyze material culture of all sorts and critique museum objects and exhibitions.
Students are expected to be able to identify the authors’ main arguments and methods, to gain
familiarity with how the field has changed over time and across disciplines, and to put the
methods to use in their own object analyses. In most classes, I will present some visual sources
and/or objects, which we can analyze together in class. We will also tour museum exhibitions
together. Field trip days are to be announced.
Assignments: Assignments include a 3-page exhibition review; a 3-page response paper to
readings from a class assignment and leading a class discussion; and a final project, which will
be a class-organized exhibition at SLUMa. The final project will include an exhibition proposal,
draft and final version of an exhibition script and brochure essay.
The 3-page exhibition review is due on March 2. Visit a local museum and analyze one of its
exhibitions. Determine the themes or “take-away” messages, and analyze the success of the
objects, text, and exhibition design in communicating these themes. What was good about the
show? What was less so? How does the curator use the objects? Can you offer
recommendations for improving the show? I will provide examples of exhibition reviews, for
your reference.
Before the class scheduled for March 18, we will divide the class into three groups
corresponding to the three controversial exhibitions outlined in the syllabus for that date. Each
group will study the exhibition content, the curatorial process, the issues and controversies raised
by the exhibition; the visitors and critics’ responses to the show; and the exhibition’s relationship
to larger issues of material culture. No paper is due.
The 3-page response paper can be written about any of the assigned readings. The paper will be
due on the day the related topic will be discussed in class, and you will be expected to lead that
week’s discussion with a fellow student. For the paper, you are expected to review the author’s
main points and analyze one or more aspects of his or her argument. The objective is not to
summarize the article’s content but figure out what the author is arguing and respond to it. You
should consider the article’s theoretical and methodological assumptions. Feel free to relate the
article to other readings from in or outside the class. To lead the discussion, you will need to
prepare broad questions from the readings to stimulate class discussions and to come up with
activities to get students involved in the topic. You are strongly encouraged to use objects you
bring to class (or ask others to bring to class) as part of your lesson plan. We will sign up for
classes to lead at the beginning of the term.
The final project is to design and implement a small exhibition at the SLUMa. Working
together, you will come up with an exhibition topic that will allow you to use images and objects
from the St Louis area. With my guidance, you will create a 2-3 page exhibition proposal to
submit to the director of SLUMa, and then locate objects and images to exhibit, create an
exhibition script, get permissions to exhibit the materials, and an essay to accompany the
exhibition. The exhibition proposal paper is February 9. If approved, we will be able to mount
the exhibit this term, or if the museum exhibit does not permit it this term, then at a later date.
A complete draft of the script and essay is due on April 13. Class presentations about the final
project will be on the last day of class, April 27, unless we need to reschedule to fit the
SLUMa director’s schedule. The final project is due May 7.
Grading of the papers and final proejct is based on the level of analysis, extent of research,
creativity, knowledge of material, and clarity of writing. Class participation is also important to
your grade, so please come to class prepared for discussions. I really look forward to working
with you!