The Cultural Lives of Things: An Introduction to American Material Culture

American culture has often been defined by its obsessive attachment to THINGS--the iPhones, coffee cups, sneakers and countless other material possessions that fill our everyday lives. This course will explore our contradictory relationship to such objects. Some serve practical functions, and give a sense of agency or identity; others seem to possess or control us, dictating the terms on which we live our lives, or even how we understand our world and ourselves. How do things take hold of us? What gives them potency, value, and cultural significance? What psychological, social, economic and political purposes do they serve? And do we as Americans have a distinct relationship--or a dysfunctional attachment--to our possessions? To answer such questions, we will consider objects of all kinds, from the mundane and utilitarian to the strange, rare and often- fetishized. We'll explore their characteristics and origins, their participation in regimes of commodification and power, and their everyday and symbolic functions. The course introduces different strategies for interpreting objects as evidence, drawing upon work from a range of disciplines (anthropology, art history, sociology, archaeology, etc.) as well as from theorists and influencers from Karl Marx to Jean Baudrillard, Andy Warhol to Marie Kondo. Students should expect to do lots of hands-on work, engaging objects in the various places they "live"--from the IKEA showroom to their own living room, the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the thrift store. The course will also spend some time asking what it means for objects to "die," and how looming environmental and economic threats haunt our relationship to things.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU Hum; BU Eth; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM

The Cultural Lives of Things: An Introduction to American Material Culture

AMERICAN CULTURE STUDIES 261

Section 01