1/28 Recap Overview

The collection of essays we discussed this week all dealt with the use of objects to acquire a greater knowledge of not only the past, but the present, and possible the future.



Class began with an overview of the beginning of the material culture world. In the 1960s, historians and those from the English/literature community realized that objects could be used to create a more diverse and complete examination of their disciplines.



Objects themselves speak multitudes

Objects with documentary evidence help fill in the gaps

Objects when there is no documentary evidence can reveal new ideas and information



Knowing your sources is critical in placing objects in context. We examined the two books we read for class: American Artifacts and History from Things as objects. Color, text, photographs, placement, etc. are all important in understanding what the object is trying to say. What is its purpose, why is it here?



Haltman and Prown's American Artifacts defines material culture and lays out steps to the Prownian Analysis of objects:



description --> deduction--> speculation--> research--> interpretive analysis



Everyone in the class was given the same image. We were asked to write a description of what we saw. This is the first, very basic step in Prownian analysis: write down what you see, not what you think you see. A classmate explained that she wrote her description as if she was explaining it to a blind person. As easy as that sounds, the task proved difficult. The image was jam packed full of detail and individual scenes that created one. The hardest part was probably figuring out where to start. Once that decision was made, the next difficulty, for me, was to keep my own outside inference and analysis into what the scence represents. That is another step...



After we finished we traded descriptions with another person in the class who is in a different field than our own. I am a historian, so I partnered up with a classmate from the IAR department. We decided that if we put our two descriptions together, it would form a pretty thorough example.

This exemplifies the idea that two heads are better than one, especially when those heads

are accostomed to different thinkings!



We took time out of the rest of class to discuss the readings found in History from Things. These essays dealt with more specific ideas in the material culture world. Topics included why we need objects, different ways to look at objects (instruments, signs), materials used to make objects, importance of history of evolution of objects, importance of objects in understanding technology and changes.



Our discussions raised awareness of how important material culture is to broaden our knowledge of the world, and just how different that world is.