AMST 628Q
"MATERIAL CULTURE STUDIES THEORY"
Fall Semester 2003

 

Mary Corbin Sies                                                Phone:  301-405-1361 (W)
                                                                                    301-345-1924 (H)

                                                                                    (between 10 am & 9:30 pm)

Office: 1104 Holzapfel Hall                                 Email:  ms128@umail.umd.edu

 

Office Hours:                                                    

Monday 3-5, Tu 1:30-3:30 (schedule w/Val), and before or after class by appt. (schedule w/me)

 

 

Description:  This proseminar will introduce students to a wide range of scholarly works in the fields of material culture studies and cultural landscape studies.  The course should prove useful for students specializing in these fields and for any students who want to think systematically about what material and visual evidence might contribute to their research interests.  This semester AMST 628Q will have a strong but not exclusive emphasis on working class and artisanal cultures.  The course will cover a fairly wide range of material culture genres and sub­fields, e.g., folk art, cultural landscapes, decorative arts, public history, photography, consumer culture, and the cultures of everyday life.  Readings will showcase several fieldwork techniques, theoretical approaches, and interdisciplinary methodologies and will include university- and museum-based scholarship. 

 

There are six goals for the course: 

·         to introduce a range of topics, subfields, and theoretical frame­works in contemporary material culture studies and cultural landscape studies

·         to evaluate the schol­arly potential and limitations of theories and methods currently resonating in material culture and cultural landscape studies

·         to think critically and imaginatively about what kinds of fieldwork methods and theoretical frameworks will help scholars study the material worlds of persons culturally situated outside the European and American elite and artisanal groups on whom most fieldwork methods center

·         to build a base of knowledge about what artifacts and landscapes can tell us about working class and artisanal cultures

·         to develop working prob­lematics for those subfields or genres of material culture and cultural landscape studies that are of greatest interest to students in the class

·         to provide practice in the thinking, writing, and speaking skills necessary for achievement in the academic or public history setting. 

 

 

Course Calendar and Readings:  (# denotes item on reserve at McKeldin Library.  * denotes items available in the graduate lounge for borrowing to photocopy).

 

Sept. 3              Course Introduction

 

Sept. 10            How do you Study Things and Landscapes? and Why?

 

READINGS: 

·         Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison, "Shaping the Field: The Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Material Culture," and Cary Carson, "Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows," in Martin & Garrison, American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field, 1-20, 401-428;

·         Daniel Miller, "Why Some Things Matter," from Miller, ed., Material cultures (University of Chicago, 1998), 3-21;

·         Charles Montgomery, "The Connoisseurship of Arti­facts," and *E. McClung Fleming, "Artifact Study: A Proposed Model," in Schlereth, ed., Material Culture Studies in America, 143-152, 162-182;

·         Jules Prown, "Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method," in St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860, 17-37;

·         Richard J. Powell, "The Dark Center," in Powell, Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (Thames & Hudson, 1997), 6-22;

·         Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," from Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Thing, 64-91;

·         Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Why We Need Things," and Peirce Lewis, "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents," in Lubar and Kingery, eds., History from Things (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 20-29 and 115-139;

·         D. W. Meinig, "The Beholding Eye," in Meinig, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, 33-48;

·         Dell Upton, "Architectural History or Landscape History," Journal of Architectural Education (Aug. 1991), 195-199;

·         Mary Corbin Sies, "Toward a Performance Theory of the Suburban Ideal, 1877-1917," in Carter and Herman, eds., Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IV, 197-207;

·         Richard H. Schein, “The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting an American Scene,” Annals Asso Am Geog 87:4 (1997): 660-680.

·         Jane Rendell, "Introduction: Gender, Space" in Rendell, Penner & Borden, Gender, Space, Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (Routledge, 2000), 101-111;

·         Jeremy Korr, "A Proposed Model for Cultural Landscape Study," Material Culture 29 (1997): 1-18.
    

Sept. 17:           Working Class History and Culture:  Tools and Ideas

 

READINGS: 

·         “Working Class Studies: Why & How?” http://www.as.ysu.edu/~cwcs/Whyhow.html;

·         Robin D.G. Kelley, “’We Are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South,” JAH 80, 1 (1993): 75-112;

·         Lynn Weber, Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: A Conceptual Framework (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), excerpt TBA;

·         Robert Paynter and Randall H. McGuire, "The Archaeology of Inequality: Material Culture, Domination, and Resistance," in Paynter & McGuire, Archaeology of Inequality (1991), 1-27;

·         Loic Wacquant, “Making Class: The Middle Class(es) in Social Theory and Social Structure,” in McNall, Levine, and Fantasia, eds., Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives (Westview Press, 1991), 39-64.

·         Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, “Farewell to the Working Class?” and Joan Scott, “The ‘Class’ We Have Lost,” ILWCH 57 (Spr 2000), 1-30 and 69-75.

·         E.P. Thompson, “Preface” from The Making of the English Working Class (Vintage, 1963), 9-13;

·         Jacqueline Jones, “Introduction,” from American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (Norton, 1998), 13-20;

·         Leonie Sandercock, "Introduction: Framing Insurgent Historiographies for Planning," in Sandercock, ed., Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History (University of California, 1998), 1-33.

 

Sept. 24:           Folk Art/Folklife

 

READINGS: 

·         John Michael Vlach, "The Concept of Community and Folklife Study," in Simon Bronner, ed., American Material Culture and Folklife: A Prologue and Dialogue, (1985);

·         Michael Owen Jones, "Why Take a Behavioral Approach to Folk Objects?" in Lubar & Kingery, History From Things, 182-196;

·         Simon J. Bronner, "Consuming Things," in Grasping Things (University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 160-210;

·         Grey Gundaker, "Introduction: Home Ground," and Robert Farris Thompson, “Bighearted Power: Kongo Presence in the Landscape and Art of Black America,” in Gundaker, ed., Keep Your Head to the Sky: Interpreting African American Home Ground (University Press of Virginia, 1998), 3-23, 37-64;

·         Grey Gundaker, "African-American history, cosmology and the moral universe of Edward Houston's yard," Journal of Garden History 14 (1994): 179-205;

·         Eugene Metcalf, "Artifacts and Cultural Meaning," in Pocius, ed., Living in a Material World, 199-207;

·         Suzanne Seriff, “Folk Art From the Global Scrap Heap: The Place of Irony in the Politics of Poverty,” in Cerny and Seriff, eds., Recycled Re-Seen: Folk Art From the Global Scrap Heap (Abrams, 1996), 8-29.    

    

Oct. 1:             Artisans, Artistry, and the Work of Glassie and Vlach

 

READINGS:      

·         Henry Glassie, “Meaningful Things and Appropriate Myths: The Artifact’s Place in American Studies,” in St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 62-92;

·         Henry Glassie, Material Culture, Chs-1-4 (Indiana University Press, 1999);

·         John Michael Vlach, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts, Chs 1, 4-5, 7-8 (Georgia,1990 edit).

 

Oct. 8               Decorative Arts and Consumerism I

READING: 

·         Ann Smart Martin, "Makers, Buyers, Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework" Winterthur Portfolio (1993): 141-157;

·         Celia Lury, "Material Culture and Consumer Culture," in Lury, Consumer Culture (Rutgers, 1996), 10-51;

·         Paul R. Mullins, Race + Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture,(Plenum, 1999), chs. 1-2;

·         Edward S. Cooke, Jr., "The Study of American Furniture from the Perspective of the Maker," in Gerald Ward, ed., Perspectives on American Furniture, 113-126;

·         Rodris Roth, "Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage," in St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 439-462;

·         John Kuo Wei Tchen, "Porcelain, Tea, and Revolution," in Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 (JHUP, 1999), 3-24;

·         Alison Clarke, "Tupperware," in Roger Silverstone, ed., Visions of Suburbia (1997), 132-160.

 

Oct. 15:            Dec Arts and Consumer Culture II

 

READING: 

·         Kenneth W. Goings, Mammy and Uncle Mose (Indiana University Press, 1994);

·         Patricia A. Turner, Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies, Part I (Virginia, 1994), 9-62;

·         Mullins, Race and Affluence, ch. 3;

·         M. M. Manring, "The Secret of the Bandanna: The Mammy in Contemporary Society," from Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 149-183;

·         Ann DuCille, “Toy Theory: Black Barbie and the Deep Play of Difference,” Skin Trade (Harvard, 1996), ch. 1.

 

Oct. 22:            Dec Arts and Consumer Culture III          

 

READING:

·         Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001);

·         Mullins, Race and Affluence, chs. 5-7.

 

Oct. 29:            Consumer Culture IV: The Work of Lizabeth Cohen

 

READINGS:

·         Lizabeth A. Cohen, "Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes," in Schlereth, ed., Material Culture Studies in America, 289-305;

·         Cohen, “Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s,” AQ 41 (Mar 1989): 6-33 (available on J-Stor);

·         Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Knopf, 2003);

·         Shelley Nickles, “More is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar America,” AQ 54 (Dec. 2002), 581-622 (available on Project Muse).

 

Nov. 5:             Cultural Landscapes I

 

READINGS: 

·         Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, "Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study," in Groth and Bressi, eds., Understanding Ordinary Landscapes (Yale University Press, 1997);

·         Dell Upton, "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," in St. George, Material Life in America, 335-384;

·         Gail Lee Dubrow and Donna Graves, Sento at Sixth and Main (Washington, 2002);

·         Farah Jasmine Griffin, 'Who set you flowin': The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), Intro, chs. 2-3;

·         Cheryl J. LaRoche and Michael L. Blakey, Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground,” Historical Archaeology 31 (1997): 84-106;

·         Luis Aponte-Pares, “Appropriating Place in Puerto Rican Barrios: Preserving Contemporary Urban Landscapes,” in Alanen & Melnick, eds., Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America (JHUP, 2000), 94-111.

           

Nov. 12:           Cultural Landscapes II: Public Art and Public History

 

READING:

·         Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT Press, 1995), read all of Part I and select 2 chs. from Part II;

·         James W. Loewen, "No History to Tell: Hampton," in Loewen, Lies Across America (New Press, 1999), 338-351;

·         Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Freedom Bags (videorecording, 1990);

·         Gail Dubrow, "Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags: New Directions in the Preservation and Interpretation of Gay and Lesbian Heritage," Historic Preservation Forum 12:3 (Spring 1998): 31-44;

·         Betti-Sue Hertz, Ed Eisenberg, and Lisa Maya Knauer, “Queer Spaces in New York City: Places of Struggle, Places of Strength,” in Ingram, Bouthillette, and Retter, eds., Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance (Bay Press, 1997): 356-370.

 

 

Nov. 19:           Cultural Landscapes III:  A Performance Approach

                       

READING: 

·         Shannon Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (University of Michigan Press, 2000).

 

 

Nov. 23:           Museum Scholarship and Exhibition

 

READING:  

·         James Clifford, "Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections," in Karp & Lavine, Exhibiting Cultures (Smithsonian, 1991), 212-254;

·         Ruth Abrams, “Planting Cut Flowers,” History News 55:3 (Sum 2000): 4-10.

·         Lower East Side Tenement Museum: http://www.tenement.org/Virtual_Tour/index_virtual.html

·         Civil Rights Museum: http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/

·         Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820-Present: http://americanhistory.si.edu/sweatshops/

 

DISCUSSION ON WEBCHAT:  http://www.otal.umd.edu/webchat/fal03/amst628q.html

                                                                                                       

 

Dec. 3:              Visual Culture, Photography, Ethnography

 

READINGS: 

·         Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo, Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (Kansas, 2002), 1-66;

·         Michael Frisch and Milton Rogovin, Portraits in Steel (Cornell, 1993).

 

 

Dec. 22             FINAL DUE DATE FOR YOUR REVIEW ARTICLE (3:30 pm). 

 


Course Requirements:  Students will complete weekly reading assignments, contribute weekly to seminar discussions, occasionally guide seminar discussions, write three precis, and produce a review article on a material culture or cultural landscapes topic or subfield. 

 

On Guiding Discussions:  When scheduled to guide a discussion, your job will include 1) providing a thoughtful general re­sponse to the readings, 2) developing an analysis of how the week's authors have structured their research and arguments, and 3) composing 3-4 questions for discussion that articulate central issues related to the topic.  Discussion leaders should NOT spend class time providing a play-by-play account of each item; assume everyone has read the required readings.  Sometimes we will begin class by eliciting everyone's sense of the books' or articles' major arguments, research approaches, and contributions.  Although one or two persons will serve as discussion guides each week, every seminar participant should expect to contribute to each discussion.

 

During each class our primary task will be to analyze the readings by breaking them down until we comprehend how they have been framed and constructed and how well they have been executed.  We will identify promising avenues of research, develop a set of dos and don'ts, and demystify the research process so that we may come to a better understanding of how useful research in material culture and cultural landscape studies can be done.

 

Precis: Students will write 3 precis over the course of the semester abstracting required readings for AMST 628Q.  Sign-ups will take place during the second class.  Precis-writing helps hone your analytical skills for "cracking" a work of scholarship and summarizing its essence concisely.  This is the chief skill required for the review essay assignment and for successful comp-writing.  Your precis will be due on the day when we are discussing the article or book.  Please bring enough copies for everyone in the class.  If you wish, you may write one précis on an item NOT on the syllabus as a way of supplementing the class resources.

 

A good precis should summarize the main objectives of the book or article, characterize the sources, research, and methodol­ogy, articulate the primary argument of the work, and indicate its significance.  A precis is brief--it is an abstract only.  Limit one page (no smaller than 10 point font).

 

Review Article:  Your major undertaking for the semester will be the writing of a review article in which you assess the recent state of the art in a particular subfield or on a specific topic of material culture or cultural landscape studies that interests you.  For that subfield or topic, you should select rough­ly 8-15 works for specific and substantive evaluation; as a group, those works should represent the major contours of the field or topic.  Your essay will be judged on 1) how well you summarize the his­torio­gra­phy of the subject, 2) the quality of your evaluation of the works chosen for specific review, and 3) your articulation of a prob­lematic, i.e., your presentation of a promising direction for future study. 

 

Books available for purchase at Vertigo Books.  All books are on reserve at McKeldin.  In addition, I will place my personal copies of most books “on reserve” in the coffee room. 

 

Henry Glassie,  Material Culture (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999)

Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT Press, 1995)

Paul R. Mullins, Race + Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (Plenum, 1999)

Kenneth W. Goings, Mammy and Uncle Mose (Indiana University Press, 1994)

John Michael Vlach, The Afro American Tradition in Decorative Arts (University of Georgia Press, 1990).  (Out of print; try used book outlets; Amazon has copies for $17.95 up)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001)

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Knopf, 2003)

Gail Lee Dubrow and Donna Graves, Sento at Sixth and Main (Washington, Seattle Arts Commission, 2002) (Out of print, but Amazon has copies for $14).

Shannon Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (University of Michigan Press, 2000),

Michael Frisch and Milton Rogovin, Portraits in Steel (Cornell, 1993).

 

 

Grading:            Your grade will be calculated roughly as follows:

 

            Weekly participation in seminar                                         20%

            Discussion guiding                                                           10%

            Précis                                                                            10%

            Review Article                                                                60%