Writing Material Culture: Directed Readings

2:00-4:00Wednesday

211 Greenlaw

University of North Carolina

Bernard L. Herman

1

211 Greenlaw Hall

Overview

Writing Material Culture is a reading seminar that examines multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives that shape the critical reception and interpretation of objects and images of all sorts. Ourdirected readings explore the ways in which material culture can be written and the application of an array of approaches for analysis and writing. Our readings, however, do not superintend an overview of a field as diverse as its subject matter, but offer examples of strategies that can be combined and applied to the scrutiny of things. Consider each of our readings as a critical tool that has a place in an analytical toolbox and recognize that you will constantly add to your stock of tools.

Readings: Each week will emphasize a particular theme, methodology, or critical perspective. You need to have read these works and be prepared to engage in a directed readings discussion that explores first, the approaches and methodologies employed, and second, the application of those ideas to your own work in the field. The readings begin with those that are more general and move toward more focused debates. The readings will be either on electronic reserve or on our directed readingsSakai site. Check both locations. A handful of texts have been ordered for class. These include:

  • Rebecca Stott, Oyster
  • Francis Ponge, Soap
  • Susan Stewart, On Longing

Discussion: The success of ourdirected readings hinges on the quality of our conversations. Our conversations will be introduced with a brief commentary that sets the stage and provides theoretical context for key arguments. The introductory remarks may be anchored with an object or image of choice—preferably something that poses a particular problem and is related to our collaboration on Southern Things (below).

Written requirements: In a directed readings about writing material culture, we should write. Our writing will be an object-drivencollection of original short essays on the theme of Southern Things, and it will take shape in the spirit of a writers’ workshop. The quarterly journal Cabinet provides the model for our enterprise. The editors of Cabinet select a theme for each number and then devote the latter half of the issue to short essays that offer reflections on the theme. Past themes include dust, forensics, logistics, punishment, and more.

Our theme, Southern Things, debuted in Spring 2012: First, each participant chose an iconic Southern Thing and presented that choice in seminar. We discussed them all and draw up the final list. Throughout the endeavor, we sought iconic objects that in some way epitomize the region and yet have largely escaped scrutiny. The result were 1500 +/- word meditations on Southern Thing that drew upon the critical methodologies we encountered in readings and discussion. The project was and continues to be about “writing material culture” and we are committed to writing substantively, insightfully and beautifully.

Jonathan Allen, “Mark of Integrity,” Cabinet, 33 (Spring 2009), 61-65. Issue on Deception.

Steven Connor, “Pulverulence,” Cabinet, 35 (Fall 2009), 71-76. Issue on Dust.

Molly Wright Steenson, “Interfacing with the Subterranean,” Cabinet, 41 (Spring 2011), 82-86. Issue on Infrastructure.

D. Graham Burnett and Sal Randolph, “The Memory Hole Has Teeth,” Cabinet, 42 (Summer 2011), 70-75. Issue on Forgetting.

Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman, “Mengele’s Skull,” Cabinet, 43 (Fall 2011), 61-67. Issue on Forensics.

Will Wiles, “Practicing Restraint,” Cabinet, 46 (Summer 2012), 66-68. Issue on Punishment.

Object visits: On occasion we may visit an object.

Grading:

Conversation –50%. Participation includes two components. First, a reading and discussion seminar requires consistent and continuing engagement. You need to keep up with the weekly readings, prepare questions and discussion points, and come prepared to exchange ideas. Second, the writing component of our class takes the shape of a collaborative endeavor that involves critical and constructive readings of one another’s writings. This aspect of our class follows the model of an art studio course. You need to be prepared to listen, think, and share ideas about content, style, and impact.

Southern Things – 50%. This consists of two elements. First, your Southern Thing; second, a framework for growing our WordPress Southern Things open source online journal.

Class Schedule

Week 1, January 8:

Preliminary conversation. Evaluating the site; looking to the future. The histories of ideas and things.

Week 2, January 15:

  • Materiality. ed. Daniel Miller. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, 1-15.
  • Things. Ed. Bill Brown. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2004, 1-16.
  • Glassie, Henry. Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 41-86.

Week 3, January 22:

  • Attfield, Judy. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg, 2000, intro, chapters 1, 3.
  • Drucker, Johanna. “The Material Word” and “The Art of Written Image” in Figuring the Word; Essays on Books, Writing, and Visual Poetics. New York: Granary Books, 1998, 55-75.
  • Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (2007), Introduction plus selected passages. [The challenge here is that the book is written in passages that veer across a literary and critical landscape that is not neatly parsed.]

Week 4, January 29:

  • Armstrong, Robert Plant. The Affecting Presence: An Essay in Humanistic Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1971, 3-33.
  • Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, [2000], 1973, 3-30.
  • Hymes, Dell H. Foundations in Sociolinguistics; an Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974, 29-66.

Week 5, February 5:

  • The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Arjun Appadurai, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, chapters 1 and 2.
  • De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, xi-xxiv, 91-110.
  • Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 23-30.

Week 6, February 12:

  • Landscape and Power. Ed. W. J. T. (William John Thomas) Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 5-34.
  • Dell Upton, “Architecture in Everyday Life,” New Literary History, 33:4 (Autumn 2002), 707-723.
  • Isaac, Rhys.“Discourse on the Method” in The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia,1982 323-357.

Week 7, February 19:

  • Francis Ponge, Soap and other selections.
  • Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London; New York: Penguin Books; Penguin Books USA, 1997, 144-147.
  • Charles Olson,Human Universe: And Other Essays. New York: Grove Press, 1967, 51-61.

Week 8, February 26:

  • Empire of the Senses:The Sensual Culture Reader. David Howes, ed. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2005. Intro, chapters 2, 18.
  • The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Carolyn Korsmeyer, ed. Berg: Oxford, 2005. Chapters 6, 20, 22, 25.
  • Ben Highmore, “Bitter After Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics,” inGregg and Seigsworth, ed., The Affect Theory Reader (2010), 120-37.
  • Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, sensation (2002), 1-45.

Week 9, March 5:

  • Meskell, Lynn. Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. New York: Berg, 2004, 1-58.
  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966, 16-33.
  • Herman, Bernard L. “The Bricoleur revisited,” in Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison, eds., American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field (Winterthur: Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997), 37-63.

Week 10, March 12 SPRING BREAK:

Week 11, March 21:

  • Susan Stewart, On Longing, tba
  • Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (2001), Introduction and Part I.

Week 12, March 26:

  • Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion, 2000, 9-49.
  • Dyer, Richard. White. London; New York: Routledge, 1997, 1-40.
  • Dyson. Michael Eric. “Giving Whiteness a Black Eye:Excavating White Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions” inOpen Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion. New York: Basic Books, 2003, 99-125.
  • Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, eds., Memory: Hisories, Theories, Debates (2010), section on the theme of “Subjectivity and the Social,” 233-77.

Week 13, April 2:

  • Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 12-27.
  • Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986, 1-26.
  • Rancierre, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics, London: Contiuum, 2004, 20-30.

Week 14, April 9:

  • Rose, Gillian. Feminism and Geography : The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, chapters 1, 5.
  • Grosz, Elizabeth. “Bodies-Cities,” in Sexuality & Space, Beatrice Colomina, ed. Princeton: Princeton Papers on Architecture, 241-253.
  • Nesbit, Molly. “’In the absence of the parisienne…’” in Sexuality & Space, Beatrice Colomina, ed. Princeton: Princeton Papers on Architecture, 306-325.

Week 15, April 16:

  • Rebecca Stott, Oyster

Week 16, April 23:

  • Concluding conversation.

1