2009-2010: The Historical Life of Things

This seminar will explore material objects or “things” from a wide variety of historical perspectives.  It will examine the historical significance of many different kinds of material objects, including commodities and precious metals, property and money, art and household furnishings, clothing and jewelry, weapons and technological devices, religious relics and icons, books and newspapers, food and drugs, and biological artifacts.  It will inquire into the cultural, social and economic meanings that these objects acquired in specific times and places, and how those meanings changed as the objects “travelled” through society and across space and time.  It will probe the representation of things in rituals, literature, and art and the display of things in public and private spaces.  It will examine the production, distribution, consumption, destruction, and fetishization of material objects.  It will explore the question of materiality itself and how to write its history.  It will bring together cultural and social historians, economic historians, historians of technology, historians of material culture, historians of art, and scholars from a variety of other disciplines who examine material objects. It will seek to advance our understanding of the historical life of things in ways that are empirical, comparative, transnational, and conceptual.

Pre-circulated Papers:
Discussion at each event will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227. For questions, or to join our email distribution list, please contact Monte Holman at 322-6323 or monte.holman@vanderbilt.edu.
Gary Gerstle, Director, Vanderbilt History Seminar & James G. Stahlman Professor of American History

2009–2010 VHS poster