HIST 8740 - Material Culture

3 Credit Hours
Description
Provides an overview of interdisciplinary approaches to diverse material culture traditions including furniture, architecture, decorative arts, clothing and adornment, foodways, and other aspects of material life. Students explore issues of material form and structure, geographic diffusion, function, construction techniques, and multiple ways of understanding material objects in context, including cultural landscapes, performance, consumption, embodiment, and the role of the senses. This course will emphasize material culture as a means of understanding everyday life historically, as well as contexts for the exhibition and interpretation of material objects in contemporary public contexts such as museums.