The Precious and the Everyday

On what objects do we place importance and why? What can material things reveal about our desires, our experiences, our personas, and our relationships? Drawing from history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, visual art, and museum studies, we will seek to understand cultural practices that entwine human lives with the lives of material things. These practices include collecting, gleaning, connoisseurship, gift exchange, play, design, and artistic creation. Our studies will focus on the precious – luxurious, rare, ceremonial, or magical items – used to distinguish those occupying positions of power at various points historically. We will also consider how everyday tastes and crafts have varied extensively throughout the world in the making of family, cultural, nationalist, class, and gender identities. Some historical case studies may include analysis of the importance of armor and swords to ancient Mediterranean understandings of masculinity, the function of saintly relics in medieval Christianity, the impact of the French Revolution on the everyday objects common people bought and used, and the role of imperialism in the food and fashion industries. We will also consider contemporary Southeast Asia as a site of material practices, as well as several colonial and postcolonial contexts.

We will use ethnography to understand how we engage with material things, developing a field notebook that documents our observations and cultural insights. As part of a three-day field trip to Seattle we will hone our ethnographic skills through studies of objects and museum exhibits. As culmination to our studies for the quarter, students will collaborate on curating an exhibit on campus.

Weekly activities include lectures, films, workshops, seminars, field observations, and essay writing.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

6 - Cultural Anthropology

4 - Museum Studies

6 - History through Material Culture