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Department of english: dissertations, theses, and student research, thresholds of curating: literary space and material culture in the works of harriet prescott spofford, edith wharton, isabella stewart gardner, and willa cather 1870-1920.

Lindsay N. Andrews , University of Nebraska - Lincoln Follow

First Advisor

Guy Reynolds

Second Advisor

Melissa Homestead

Third Advisor

Date of this version.

Andrews, Lindsay N. "Thresholds of Curating: Literary Space and Material Culture in the Works of Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Willa Cather 1870-1920." PhD diss., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2020.

A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Major: English, Minor: Art History (Nineteenth Century Studies), Under the Supervision of Professor Guy Reynolds. Lincoln, Nebraska: May, 2020

Copyright 2020 Lindsay N. Andrews

This dissertation explores the polycentric intersections between material and literary culture in four case studies spanning 1870-1920. Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Willa Cather are four women whose work reflects a capacity to defy the genre-specific boundaries for which they are canonically renown. Harriet Prescott Spofford was an important contributor to the interior design movement in the early Gilded Age following challenges to finding publication resources for her fiction within a male-dominated publishing community. Edith Wharton’s ties to material culture are well known, but less attention is granted to the ways in which her own expertise in interior design is materially and spatially manifest in her fiction. Combined with her own interest in fashion, Willa Cather’s fine art connoisseurship and professional journalism inform the sartorial flourishes she inserts in her novels. Isabella Stewart Gardner is not just a collector—she is a curator of the material ephemera she purchased or stewarded in her museum. Her vitrines, specifically, reflect a narrativization of her relationships and express authority over the ways in which those artifacts are arranged.

The interdisciplinary scaffolding this dissertation adopts will survey the ways these women exploit the boundaries of the genres in which they were participating. To arrive at this point, the technical scope of this dissertation will excavate literary and material artifacts by using the complementary techniques of formal analysis and close reading. Combined with archival material and primary sources to convey the range of literary and artistic history, the case studies selected for analysis strive to explore the mechanisms by which women anchor “things” as a way of securing themselves within the boundaries of meaningful relationships—with material culture, with personal relationships, or with genre-specific explorations of art. The overarching argument the thesis will propose is that as each woman asserts control over her own work, at the same time, she creates a cultural economy that supports and promotes her friendships, patronages or individual acts of artistry.

Advisor: Guy Reynolds

Since May 12, 2020

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Studio 12: material culture and transcultural exchanges dissertation studios 2020–21, prof wessie ling.

The increasing complexity of the material and symbolic flows of fashion, textile, artefact and commodity is the concern of this studio. Material culture is taken as a site for multiple layers of world encounters that lead to intriguing cultural dynamics. Consider it for the examination of commodity-making in the twenty-first century, an interconnecting force typified by multiple encounters of world cultures and the transcultural, its capacity to interconnect the world; circulate people, goods and ideas; and map out multiple cultures and identities. That material culture brings out multi-layered encounters between the subject and its outside world often goes beyond the dichotomy of Orientalism and Occidentalism. The outcomes are necessarily transcultural and essentially hybrid, offering distinctive stimuli for re-imagination; and they are often underscored by co-creation.

By exploring the processes and the effects of transculturality and co-creation on the transforming identities of people, good, ideas and culture, this studio offers an understanding of the dynamics behind the multiple encounters and the uncanny enchantment (or disenchantment, perhaps) with fashion, textile, artefact and commodity. It sheds light on the multiple connections, comparisons and circulations of people, goods and ideas through a global, interconnected method of inquiry. It addresses the discourses and the processual dynamics of the historical, cultural and political-economic encounter across cultures that underpin the production of goods. Economic, political and socio-cultural intervention, to and from one locality to another, instigate the fascination with and offer distinctive stimuli for cultural re-imagination.

Consider (an) example(s) that address(es)/operate(s) within, but not exclusive to, one or more of the following:

• Cultural globalisation
• Global histories
• Transcultural artefact/commodity
• Global fashion/textile
• Cross-cultural appropriation
• Transnational/transcultural identities
• Transnational production
• Cross-cultural exchanges

Studio bibliography

• Adamson, Glenn, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley, ed. Global Design History . London: Routledge, 2011.
• Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
• Bauman, Z., ‘On Glocalization; Or Globalization for Some, Localization for Some Others’, Thesis Eleven, no. 54, August 1998, pp. 37-49.
• Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture . London: Routledge, 1993.
• Eicher, Joanne and Sandra Lee Evenson. The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture and Society . New York: Fairchild Publications, 2008.
• Eisenstadt, N. Shumel, ed. Multiple Modernities . Transaction Publishers, 2002.
• Fowler, G, Jie, and Les Carlson. “The Visual Presentation of Beauty in Transnational Fashion Magazine Advertisements.” Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising , vol. 36, no.2, 2015, pp. 130–56.
• Friedman, James. Cultural Identity & Global Process, London: Sage, 1994.
• Ling, Wessie. ‘Bag of Remembrance: A Cultural Biography of Red-White-Blue, from Hong Kong to Louis Vuitton’, in Reggie Blaszczyk and Veronique Pouillard (eds.), European Fashion: The Creation of a Global Industry, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, pp. 283-301.
• Ling, Wessie, Lorusso, Mariella and Segre Reinach, Simona. Critical Studies in Global Fashion', Zone Moda Journal, vol. 9, issue 2 , 2019, pp. V-XVI. 
• Ling, Wessie. and Segre Reinach, Simona. (2019) ‘Co-Creation and Transculturaion in Fashion-Making: Sino-Italian Fashion as Method’, Modern Italy, vol 24, issue 4, pp. 401-415.
• Maynard, Margaret. Dress and Globalization . Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
• Miller, Daniel, Material Culture and Mass Consumption, Wiley, 1997.
• Niessen, Sandra, Annemarie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, eds. Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress . Oxford: Berg, 2003.
• Peirson-Smith, Ann and H. Joseph Hancock, eds. Tranglobal Fashion Narratives: Clothing Communication, Style Statements and Brand Storytelling . Bristol: Intellect, 2018.
• Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
• Riello, Giorgio. “Asian Knowledge and the Development of Calico Printing in Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Global History , vol. 5, no. 1, March 2019, pp. 1–28.
• Robertson, Roland. ‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’ in Featherstone, M., Lash, S. and Robertson, R. (eds.) Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1995, pp. 25-44.
• Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
• Scafidi, Susan. Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law . Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
• Tirthankar, Roy and Giorgio Riello. Global Economic History . London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
• Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion . Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

* Studio image: Wessie Ling, Labels of Desire , 2015. Banner: Hans Op de Beeck, Staging Silence (3) , video still (detail), 2019

Dissertation Studios 2020–21

Studio 01: Another Place

Ektoras Arkomanis

Out of a direct treatment of place, whether subjective or objective, emerges another place. It is neither new, nor fixed in time, but it has remained unexplored, scarcely documented – piles of lime and useless cicadas.

Studio 02: Feminist Approaches

Edwina Attlee

The Dissertation Studio 02 seminar series will address feminist practices within architecture, history and activism.

Studio 03: Narrative and Storytelling

Jon Baldwin

This studio focuses on modes of storytelling and narrative conventions. We will particularly consider how narrative intersects with, and informs, identity.

Studio 04: The Conquest of Joy

Aleks Catina

This studio encourages dialogues around the cultural production at a time when narratives founded on certainty have ceased to make sense.

Studio 05: This is my truth; show me yours: Post-truth, propaganda and bulls**t

Jeremy Collins

This studio will look at the emergence of the notion of "post truth" and explore links between other ideas around propaganda and Harry Frankfurt’s argument about "bulls**t". We will consider the usefulness of these ideas, and how they can be explored in creative practice.

Studio 06: The Practice of Space – Writing Atmospheres in Art and Architecture

Nico de Oliveira

Dissertation Studio 06 looks at space as practice, since each location is a mutable entity framed as a moment in time, populated by individuals and shaped by their actions as artists, musicians, curators, designers, architects, writers and spectators.

Studio 07: Meaningful Work

Paul Harper

This studio will consider the value of making in itself, independent of the product or outcome, exploring the idea of craft as meaningful work.

Studio 08: Speak, Form.

Andrew Hewish

Dissertation Studio 8 asks: How is it that form might speak? This studio looks at the power of rhetoric, of the medium as message, of the figure as discourse.

Studio 09: Thinking with Ruins

Danielle Hewitt

This studio pays heed to these cultural forms and persuasions but asks, how might we productively think with ruins in the present?

Studio 10: Sport and Aesthetics

Dissertation Studio 10 will examine the concept of aesthetics as applied within that most everyday activity: sport.

Studio 11: Le Marteau Sans Maître (The Hammer without a Master)

Joseph Kohlmaier

In a networked world where knowledge and information seems to be accessible everywhere and in any form; and where people in distant places appear to speak to us in real time from our computer screens, Studio 11 tries to imagine an ‘immediate’ and performative experience of the world – outside language and not shaped by our intellect and will.

Studio 12: Material Culture and Transcultural Exchanges

Wessie Ling

Dissertation Studio 12 is concerned with the increasing complexity of the material and symbolic flows of fashion, textile, artefact and commodity.

Studio 13: B(read)

Harriet McKay

Focussing on two of life’s key ingredients, reading and bread, this Dissertation Studio offers sessions that will encourage you to experience and experiment with both.

Studio 14: Rewilding

Gabriele Oropallo

In this Dissertation Studio, we will examine some of the many ways in which art, architecture, and design connect to the discourse on rewilding.

Studio 15: “If I stay silent nothing will change”: Identity, Politics, Social Change and Creative Culture(s)

Christina Paine

This cross-disciplinary studio considers how power, culture, politics, identity, representation, activism, social media, and mass culture theory intersect with a range of arts practices, including photography, architecture, design and fine art, film studies, fashion and music, sound, pop art, and theatre.

Studio 16: A Material World

Gina Pierce

This Dissertation Studio will be based on the processes that are intrinsic to the design and making of textiles, however it will also be looking at the materiality of these textiles as objects.

Studio 17: Souvenir

Lesley Stevenson

This studio is concerned with those objects that are lent a particular enchantment because of their relationship with the past. It considers the role of memory and how it is embodied in cultural artefacts.

Studio 18: Modes of Human Exchange (Being-with and without)

Nicholas Temple

This studio considers the current (exceptional) conditions of human exchange in a broader historical/social context, highlighting how facial/bodily gestures and the decorum of their physical/ambient surroundings have provided essential clues to the way we respond to, and interact with, the ‘other’.

Studio 19: Paths of Desire

“Design needs to be plugged into human behaviour. Design dissolves in behaviour.” Naoto Fukasawa

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Material culture in the mediterranean: an exploration and examination of anti-judaic and antisemitic spanish medieval cultural history.

Madison Elizabeth Tarleton , University of Denver Follow

Date of Award

Document type.

Dissertation

Degree Name

Organizational unit.

Joint Ph.D. Program in Study of Religion

First Advisor

Albert Hernandez

Second Advisor

Jonathan Sciarcon

Third Advisor

Bonnie Clark

Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, Gavin Langmuir, Judaism, Medieval Mediterranean, Medieval Spain

Author Gavin Langmuir produced two monographs during his career, both published in 1990. Across both texts, one a proper monograph and one a compilation of essays, he offers a bifurcation of anti-Judaism and antisemitism. These texts illuminate his definitions of the terms and his differentiations on the basis of reason and rationality. Using the bones of these theories, I propose a different kind of bifurcation of these terms as it relates to Mediterranean (medieval) material culture using a cultural historical lens. By applying Gavin Langmuir's theoretical model of nonrational anti-Judaism and irrational antisemitism to material culture, I argue that visual nonrational anti-Judaism and visual irrational antisemitism are useful, non-linear categories to evaluate and question medieval Mediterranean representations of Jews, Judaism, and the perceptions around a community of people different from the Christian majority.

In order to demonstrate these categories, I will apply each term or phrase to two material culture artifacts that support both the theoretical base as explored by Langmuir and my notions of the categories supported by my chapters on history, material culture methodology, and a chapter exploring notions of reason and rationality. Four artifacts will be explored and analyzed using either visual nonrational anti-Judaism or visual irrational antisemitism. The dissertation is divided into seven chapters that categorically split up the supporting evidence, including an Introduction that defines terms and parameters and supports my positionality as the author. Following the introduction, the chapters will be as follows: Material Culture Methodology, History of Medieval Spain, Defining Rationality and Reason, Visual Nonrational Anti-Judaism, and Visual Irrational Antisemitism. I will conclude with a final chapter that mirrors my introduction, including the positionality of Gavin Langmuir, an unpacking of terms, and implications for future work.

I argue for the use and creation of the phrasing of visual nonrational anti-Judaism and visual irrational antisemitism for future work, acknowledging that these categories are non-linear and that there is nuance in working specifically with Medieval Mediterranean artifacts and objects. Regardless, these categories offer a different way to investigate, analyze, and evaluate representations of Jews and the impact that these representations had on Spanish Medieval Jewry, taking into consideration worldview, theological influence, and the cultural and historical events that influenced attitudes towards Jews and Jewish communities.

Copyright Date

Copyright statement / license for reuse.

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Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Madison Elizabeth Tarleton

Received from ProQuest

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application/pdf

English (eng)

Recommended Citation

Tarleton, Madison Elizabeth, "Material Culture in the Mediterranean: An Exploration and Examination of Anti-Judaic and Antisemitic Spanish Medieval Cultural History" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations . 2361. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/2361

Medieval history, Judaic studies, Religion

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'History of material culture'

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Philp, Jude. "Resonance : Torres Strait material culture and history." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.411074.

Armstrong, Pamela. "Byzantine and Ottoman Torone material culture as history." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599931.

Bolland, Charlotte. "Italian material culture at the Tudor court." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2012. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/26963.

Rosario, Deborah Hope. "Milton and material culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:45542c8d-0049-49cf-8d19-6d206195d9a7.

Andrews, Noam. "Irregular Bodies: Polyhedral Geometry and Material Culture in Early Modern Germany." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493270.

Thomas, Sarah E. "Community and Culture: Material Life in Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1750-1850." W&M ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1530192713.

Francois, Marie Eileen 1963. "When pawnshops talk: Popular credit and material culture in Mexico City, 1775-1916." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282621.

Scherer, Mark Albert Larsen Lawrence Harold. "A material cultural analysis of the foundational history of Latter Day Saintism, 1827-1844." Diss., UMK access, 1998.

Hawley, Anna Louise. "Structures of daily life : the material culture of Surry County, Virginia, 1690-1715." PDXScholar, 1986. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3611.

Croker, Trevor D. "Formation of the Cloud: History, Metaphor, and Materiality." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/96439.

Carlson, Heidi Julia. "The built environment and material culture of Ireland in the 1641 Depositions, 1600-1654." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/269316.

Nakou, Georgia. "The end of the early Bronze Age in the Aegean : material culture and history." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.324282.

Mackenzie, Vanessa E. "Egypt, Rome and Aegyptophilia : rethinking Egypt's relationship with ancient Rome through material culture." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/50218/.

Cannon, A. "Socioeconomic change and material culture diversity : nineteenth century grave monuments in rural Cambridgeshire." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1986. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/273117.

Boroughs, Jason. ""I Looked to the East---": Material Culture, Conversion, and acquired Meaning in Early African America." W&M ScholarWorks, 2004. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626444.

Battles, Kelly Eileen. "The antiquarian impulse history, affect, and material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature /." Diss., Connect to online resource - MSU authorized users, 2008.

Whitley, Cynthia Ann. "The Monetary Material Culture of Plantation Life: A Study of Coins at Monticello." W&M ScholarWorks, 1991. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625658.

Pougher, Richard David. "The Confederate Enlisted Man in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Reevaluation of His Material Culture." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625436.

Willey, Amanda Mae. "Fashioning femininity for war: material culture and gender performance in the WAC and WAVES during World War II." Diss., Kansas State University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/20556.

Monteiro, Maria Lavinia Machado. "The Stone Ovens of St Eustatius: A Study of Material Culture." W&M ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625581.

Roberts, Rebecca J. "'Two meane fellows grand projectors' : the self-projection of Sir Arthur Ingram and Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, 1600-1645, with particular reference to their houses." Thesis, Teesside University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10149/254593.

Lucas, Michael T. "Negotiating public landscapes history, archaeology, and the material culture of colonial Chesapeake towns, 1680 to 1720 /." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/8032.

Liu, Xiaoyi. "Clothing, Food and Travel: Ming Material Culture as Reflected in Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193863.

Lee, Francis Melvin. "Instruir de maneira intensa e imediata: circulação e uso de estampas no Brasil joanino." Universidade de São Paulo, 2014. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8138/tde-12052015-125408/.

KARSKENS, Grace. "THE ROCKS AND SYDNEY: SOCIETY, CULTURE AND MATERIAL LIFE 1788-C1830." University of Sydney, History, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/405.

Smith, III John E. "The Art of the Airport: Using Public History and Material Culture to Humanize and Interpret the American Airport." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2018. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/496713.

Lachaud, Frederique Sophie Joelle. "Textiles, furs and liveries : a study of the material culture of the court of Edward I (1272-1307)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.317694.

Shapiro, Jonathan Chira. "Hyphenated Japan: Cross-examining the Self/Other dichotomy in Ainu-Japanese material culture." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1494762526392067.

Pregnolatto, Felipe Pascuet. "A cultura material na didática da História." Universidade de São Paulo, 2006. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8138/tde-06072007-102738/.

Manley, John Francis. "The material culture of Roman colonization : anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretations." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6952/.

Brooks, Christopher andrew. "Excavations at the Barton-Swift-Nolan House: Antebellum Material Culture in the Georgia Piedmont." W&M ScholarWorks, 1995. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625952.

Arruda, Márcia Bomfim de. "Objetos turbulentos, territórios instáveis: uma história das representações dos aparelhos elétricos no espaço doméstico (1940-60)." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2010. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/12619.

Good, Katherine L. "Adaptive Re-use:Interventions in an Existing Material Culture." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1282575826.

Schürger, André. "The archaeology of the Battle of Lützen : an examination of 17th century military material culture." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6508/.

Chezum, Tiffany. "On the endurance of indigenous religious culture in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt : evidence of material culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d6bee2aa-49a5-42db-9617-394ea1f73cf5.

Boorn, Alida S. "Interpreting the transnational material culture of the 19th-Century North American Plains Indians: creators, collectors, and collections." Diss., Kansas State University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/34472.

Grimes, Jodi Elisabeth. "Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2008. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12130/.

Alekseyeva, Anna. "Planning the Soviet everyday : reimagining the city, home and material culture of developed socialism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:241245c9-e5c1-4f11-8e2c-051b9a601088.

Medeiros, João Cabral. "Cultura material lítica e cerâmica das populações pré-coloniais dos sítios Inhazinha e Rodrigues Furtado, município de Perdizes/MG: estudo das cadeias operatórias." Universidade de São Paulo, 2008. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/71/71131/tde-18112008-112413/.

Almonte, Michelle. "History, Material Culture, and the Search for the Mythic American Dream in Angie Cruz’s Let it Rain Coffee." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3175.

Meloni, Reginaldo Alberto. "Saberes em ciências naturais = o ensino de física e química no Colégio Culto à Ciência de Campinas - 1873/1910." [s.n.], 2010. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/251421.

Coleman, Feay Shellman. ""The Palmy Days of Trade": Anglo-American Culture in Savannah, 1735-1835." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1367936128.

Pallin, Karolina. "Med föremål som källa : En textilhistorikers perspektiv på mötet mellan praktisk kunskap och Material Culture Studies." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Konstvetenskapliga institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-323859.

Ulhoa, Clarissa Adjuto. "A cultura material no ensino da história e da cultura afro-brasileira e africana: por uma pedagogia decolonial." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2018. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/8881.

Jacques, Denise. "Decent Furniture for Decent People: The Production and Consumption of Jacques & Hay Furniture in Nineteenth-Century Canada." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/19736.

Twomey, Carolyn. "Living Water, Living Stone: The History and Material Culture of Baptism in Early Medieval England, c. 600 – c. 1200." Thesis, Boston College, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:107596.

Miller, Megan. "Making History: Applications of Digitization and Materialization Projects in Repositories." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2014. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/305627.

Wamboldt, Carly R. "Study of a Cleveland, Ohio, Tailoring Business, 1854-1923: Elias Rheinheimer and Son." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1428271563.

Pierce, Elizabeth A. "Identity at the far edge of the earth : an examination of cultural identity manifested in the material culture of the North Atlantic, c. 1150-1450." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2530/.

Schubert, Layla A. Olin 1975. "Material literature in Anglo-Saxon poetry." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10909.

Clothing and Material Culture during the Civil War

Can you briefly describe your dissertation?

In my dissertation, “The Fabric of War: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era,” I explore the ways in which the conflicts and meanings surrounding clothing production and consumption shaped, and were amplified, contested, and politicized, during the 1860s and 1870s, particularly in regard to shifting ideas about gender, race, and citizenship. I also claim a central place for material culture in the making of modern society at a volatile moment of militarization, emancipation, and federal expansion.

What drew your attention to this topic?

The questions that motivate my work as a historian have been informed by the study of material culture for more than a decade—since I was introduced to its study as an undergraduate at Yale. Since then, my work with material culture has evolved from a desire to understand the physical context in which people lived to an effort to more fully understand the ways in which material culture constructs and mediates experiences, identities, meanings, and conflicts in the lives of ordinary people. I am particularly interested in questions situated at the intersection of gender, material culture, race, and the frequently contested—sometimes violent—politics of everyday life in the nineteenth century.

My current project began as a result of the observation that, despite historians’ renewed efforts to understand the cultural and gendered dimensions of the Civil War era, material culture itself is not seriously mobilized as a source or understood as an actant in the world. Reading these studies, I saw glimpses of the material environment’s importance, but there was no sustained study of its significance. And so, I wondered, might using material culture as a source base reveal something more, or different, than purely textual analysis about the nature and conduct of war, or about wartime society itself? Recent histories of wartime destruction and ruin prompted further questions: What about those objects that were lost, destroyed, or stolen? What role did they play in constructing meaning and memory, both for those who had lost their possessions and those who had taken them?

My dissertation, then, actually began as a study of wartime looting, and I fully expected to focus on a range of possessions that I knew were stolen—furniture, silver, jewelry, even harpsichords. But as I began working through primary source materials, I repeatedly encountered conflicts surrounding clothing production and consumption: a former slave submitted a claim for his stolen hat to the Southern Claims Commission; Union soldiers tore an elite southern woman’s dress into strips and tied them to a horse’s tail; women were deported from the South for producing cloth for the Confederacy; an African American soldier escaped death only by putting on a pair of civilian clothes that convinced Confederates that he was a local slave, while his comrades were captured and executed. Ultimately, it was the sources that caused me to shift the project away from a focus on looting to instead attempt to understand why clothing was such a consistently contested object, and how it may have shaped war, emancipation, and experiences of federal expansion in the 1860s and 1870s.

“Contrabands at Headquarters of General Lafayette,” in Brady’s Album Gallery, no. 372 (1862). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. LC-DIG-ds-05120. This albumen silver print depicts several Union soldiers and four African American refugees, including two laundresses with their washboards and laundry tubs, outside a house in the vicinity of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1862.The image offers evidence of the types and quality of clothing worn by refugees and soldiers, and is suggestive of African American women’s hard labor working as laundresses for Union soldiers and the laundry methods they used. Part of Matthew Brady’s Album Gallery, this was one in a series of photographs intended for public consumption.

What advice would you offer to others beginning or working on dissertations?

Given the way in which my own project developed, I would offer the following advice: Allow your sources to guide the questions you ask, even when they lead you down an unexpected path. And think broadly about what those sources might be. Although not every historical question is best answered using material or visual sources, you might be surprised by the ways in which working with non-textual sources changes the kinds of historical questions you pose, or at least alters your perspective.

Can you tell us about your research process?

My methodology weaves together texts, objects, and images held in more than twenty-five archives and museums.  Locating those sources involved assessing where I was most likely to find people talking about clothing—and the clothing itself.  Clothing, it turns out, is infrequently catalogued as a subject in manuscript collections—usually only when it is a significant theme. However, given the frequency with which I encountered it simply by chance when I began my project, I knew that the clothing was there. So I plunged into journals, letters, organizational records, and government documents, gaining a better sense, with each archival trip, of which types of collections were likely to be most fruitful.  I also talk with people. Museum curators, archivists, librarians—people who know their collections well and who are willing to think about them with me.  In terms of finding clothing itself, I began by looking at major museums and historical societies to get a sense of the range of clothing-related objects that have survived and then began to build side trips to small historical societies and museums into my research trips.

How did working with such a diverse archive shape your work?

Some may ask why I spend a great deal of time in manuscript collections since material culture is so central to my methodology. The clothing itself has much to tell us, but it is only by placing it into conversation with texts and images that I am able to grapple with both its material and discursive aspects; its physicality in terms of style, construction, and tactile qualities; and the range of social, cultural, and political meanings embedded within and created by its production and use. Interweaving objects, texts, and images adds clarity and depth to the ways in which people talked about clothing, how that clothing acted upon the body, and how it was represented in images or manipulated to make particular points that were often very political, gendered, and racially charged.

This weaving together of sources has been critical to my development of a framework for understanding the transformational power with which nineteenth century Americans imbued clothing. In my recent article in Clio: Femmes, Genre, Histoire (Fall 2014), for instance, I examine garments alongside prints and photographs of African American men to highlight the role of the military uniform in effecting the physical and inner transformation of slaves into men through posture and bodily discipline, a process that suggested to the white northern public that the black body could be disciplined without the lash.

In this particular aspect of my work, material, visual and textual sources provide different kinds of information: manuscript sources tell me that reformers expected new clothing to discipline former slave men and help them to regain their manhood; medical texts and etiquette manuals offer explanations about the links between posture, discipline, and moral uprightness; images demonstrate how artists and photographers conveyed—and the public would have encountered—the transformative potential of clothing; and tailor’s guides and the clothing itself provides evidence of structured coats that would have helped to shape a person’s posture and movement.

Objects are both interpretively and conceptually important for my research. For example, if I were to rely solely on texts in my work on body armor and cloth-covered bulletproof vests, the story I am able to tell would look quite different. Texts reveal that bulletproof vests were, indeed, produced during the Civil War, that their weight made them unpopular, and that wearing one was considered cowardly. But examining surviving vests (and pieces of vests) reveals a much more complex story. The context of how the vests were made, shaped, and worn, and how they compared to ordinary fabric vests, allows for a more nuanced analysis of the tactics advertisers used to persuade reluctant consumers. The objects themselves also reveal that these steel vests were not only uncomfortable, but also incredibly dangerous—and not simply because wearing one restricted mobility. As jagged holes in surviving breastplates reveal, being shot wearing a fabric-covered steel vest at close range would have resulted in a bullet, cloth fragments, and pieces of shrapnel being pushed into a wound on impact—a scenario that, if it did not result in immediate death, would have increased a man’s risk of deadly infection.

Objects, images, and texts, then, provide different pieces to the same historical puzzle in my work.  There is no doubt that this is a time-intensive method of research. But it is ultimately worthwhile, because it is by weaving together this broad range of sources that I am able to better understand the depth of how people’s lives and relationships; the nature and conduct of war; and the boundaries of slavery and freedom, were shaped by the material world of the past.

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History of Design and Material Culture MA

This pioneering masters course has a long-standing international reputation and a staff team whose research is shaping the field.

As a student you will examine objects, images and spaces from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century: from protest T-shirts to wedding dresses, from car advertisements to street photography, from domestic interiors to international exhibitions.

You will explore how things are created and how they circulate through global cultures past and present. You will engage with contemporary debates about gender and identity, memory and history, sustainable design and the Anthropocene, and the decolonisation and future of design history.

Excellent local resources provide rich research opportunities: the university is home to the Design Archives and we have strong local networks, including with Brighton & Hove Museums . Graduates have gone on to work in leading roles for organisations such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Brighton & Hove Museums and the Fashion and Textile Museum, and universities including Glasgow School of Art and Central St Martins.

As a crucial part of the vibrant research community represented by the Centre for Design History , you will learn with lecturers whose research strengths include fashion and dress history, photography, material culture and decolonial design.

Find out about postgraduate events

Location Brighton: Moulsecoomb

Full-time 1 year Part-time  2 years

Apply now for your place

Please review the entry requirements carefully and if you have any questions do get in touch with us .

Entry criteria

Entry requirements

Degree and experience Normally a 2:1 undergraduate degree in a relevant subject. Candidates with a 2:2 or lower or who do not have a degree will still be considered for admission if they can demonstrate suitable professional experience or substantial experience of the subject area. 

English language requirements IELTS 6.5 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in each element. Find out more about the other English qualifications that we accept .

Course content

Course structure

Your MA will be structured around two core modules: Exploring Objects and Mediating Objects (20 credits each). 

Over two semesters, these modules will enable students to understand and use current theoretical frameworks in the interpretation of material worlds and their myriad representations. Collectively seminar working, close reading and wide ranging discussion are the key learning and teaching strategy of these two modules, with the aim of support and developing students’ skills of expression and articulacy.

Alongside your core modules, you will also take a Research Methods module (20 credits) and embark upon your own research towards an 18,000 to 20,000 word dissertation. Supported by one-to-one supervision, students develop an original piece of writing often based on archival investigations of ethnographic study.

To complete your degree and cater to your specialist interests and learning requirements, you choose three further option modules, one in semester 1 and two that will take place in semester 2.

See option modules tab for a list of options.

Skirt made by Lou Taylor for Cate-May Hann in an inherited African wax print. Photo: Louise Purbrick.

Syllabus 

You will take six taught modules over your MA studies and one key piece of independent research, a dissertation.

The taught modules include two core modules Exploring Objects and Mediating Objects, and four option modules that enable you to explore specific aspects of the History of Design and Material Culture such as textiles, graphics and exhibition practice, or broaden your studies with modules in history, politics and philosophy.

The centrepiece of your MA studies is your dissertation. You will be supported through tutorials to investigate a subject or perspective of your own within the History of Design and Material Culture, undertaking primary research and making new critical interventions in this interdisciplinary field.

Previous dissertation subjects include:

• Workwear as Fashion and Anti-Fashion
• Representations of the Holocaust: the rejected works of Arnold Daghani
• Photography and Jewellery: Older women and the practices of keeping things
• The Fetishization of Women’s Hair in Victorian Material Culture
• Japanese Gardens in England
• Political Posters and the Children of Mao’s China

Graffiti, Thessaloniki. Photo: Zeina Maasri, 2011.

Option modules

• Critical Perspectives on Exhibitions
• Issues in Graphic Design
• Fashion and Dress History: New Directions
• Other shared option modules from School of Humanities and Social Science

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Street graphics, Lebanon. Photo: Zeina Maasri.

Lab facilities

Mithras House is home to all our School of Humanities and Social Science courses. It has a series of ‘labs’, which may be used for teaching on your course or in your independent research work. Design lab A space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, which are used in some teaching on our History of Art and Design courses. It has the space and equipment to work on textile projects. Displays created by students on these programmes are on view in the social spaces of the building. Life lab A comfortable space with lounge furniture intended for qualitative research with larger groups. Due to its relaxed layout and naturalistic environment, the space is suited to research using focus groups, research using observation-based methods and child research.

City lab A space designed for collaborative student learning. It is used by students and staff involved in the university’s Global Challenges programme, our collective mission to contribute towards solutions to tackling the pressing issues facing our world.

Stats lab A specialist workspace with computing equipment for statistical analysis and projects involving video and audio editing software. The lab is accessible as a study space to students on psychology courses. It is also available to students studying courses involving video and audio recording and editing, and contains eight soundproof booths.

VR and eye tracking lab This lab is used for psychological research, eye-tracking and virtual reality research.

You will also benefit from: 

world-class Design Archives

St Peters House Special Collection which contains rare, valuable, and delicate books, illustrated books, artist books and handmade items

Screen Archive South East , a moving image archive.

Take a virtual tour of the labs available

In addition, the university has close relationships with local festivals and organisations such as Cinecity, the Brighton Photo Biennial, the Brighton Festival, Brighton Festival Fringe, Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica and Lighthouse. These connections provide a range of opportunities for students. 

This course makes use of the University of Brighton Design Archives, which include the archives of the Design Council, Alison Settle, FHK Henrion and the South of England Film and Video Archive.

Close professional contact with national institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as with local collections and centres of historical interest (such as Brighton’s unique Royal Pavilion and Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, with its internationally famous collection of decorative art from the 1890s onwards), present research opportunities for students registered on the course.

The course is closely linked to our arts and humanities research division through a joint research lecture series, and we have successfully encouraged high achievers to register for the MPhil/PhD programme.

The student environment also includes the thriving postgraduate Design History Society as well as opportunities for conference presentation, professional contact and career development in the field.

The award-winning University of Brighton Design Archives.

Meet the team

Dr Charlotte Nicklas, course leader

Charlotte's main research interest is the history of dress, fashion, and textiles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but she is interested in all aspects of the history of dress and textiles and, more broadly, material culture and the history of design. She approaches these histories through objects, images and texts. At the centre of her research is the way in which dress and fashion both influence and reflect the cultural concerns of a particular historical period. Particular interests include the history of colour in clothing and fashion and fictional representations of dress and fashion. Read Charlotte's full profile .

Other staff who teach on the course include:

Dr Megha Rajguru , Dr Ceren Ozpinar , Dr Verity Clarkson , Dr Eliza Tan and Kevin Bacon, Digital Manager at Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove.

Read a Q+A with Dr Eliza Tan about her career journey .

Student views

Karen Fraser, History of Design and Material Culture graduate

"I was impressed with the range of opportunities for research and learning that included access to a variety of sources for primary research, such as objects in the Dress History Teaching Collection and photographs and written documents in the University of Brighton Design Archives.

"I enjoyed learning from the course tutors, who are active and inspiring leaders in their areas of academic interest. They facilitated an exceptional range of extracurricular lectures, conference sessions, and reading groups that greatly enhanced my experience on the course. While much of the work was completed individually, the seminars enabled me to share ideas with fellow students and gain different perspectives from engaged and supportive individuals who were at different stages in their careers."

More about this subject at Brighton

Take a closer look at the Dress and Textiles Collection

Our Dress and Textiles Collection is based in the Design Lab in our Mithras House building and used by students studying art, design and fashion history courses, as well as our curating MA course.

Follow our Curating MA on Instagram

The University of Brighton’s MA in Curating Collections and Heritage is run in partnership with Brighton Museums – find out about life on the course.

Take a look at Mithras House, home to our Humanities and Social Science courses

Whether you are an art historian or a psychologist, a creative writer or a criminologist, as a student in our school you will be studying in our newly renovated Mithras House building.

FAQs to help you decide the right history of art and design course for you

Read more from our blog

The course has an excellent track record in helping students to pursue careers in related areas as well as further study.

Many of our postgraduates have found work as lecturers, curators, journalists, designers and design consultants, while many others have pursued doctoral research, some also securing prestigious funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council).

Graduate professions

• Ej Scott  Curator, Museum of Transology, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
• Dennis Nothdruft  Curator, Fashion and Textile Museum, Bermondsey
• Cassie Davies  Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum

Teaching and research in higher education

• Torunn Kjolberg  University of South Wales
• Mairi Mackenzie  Glasgow School of Art
• Cat Rossi Kingston University

Funded doctoral research

• Janet Aspley  University of Brighton (Design Star, AHRC)
• Bridget Millmore University of Brighton (AHRC)
• June Rowe  Central Saint Martins (Rootstein Foundation)
• Sara Skillen University of Stockholm (Centre for Fashion Studies)

Design, consultancy and publishing

• Georgina Jarvis adam&eveDDB
• Christine Gent Executive director, World Fair Trade Organisation (Asia)
• Ness Wood Art director and designer, Random House Books 

Account book, Tarapacá Mining Company, Chile, Gibbs and Sons Papers. Photo: Louise Purbrick.

Fees and costs

Course fees

UK (full-time) 8,400 GBP

International (full-time) 15,900 GBP

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding .

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2024–25 .

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that are included and any extras that you may be expected to pay while studying a course  in the School of Humanities and Social Science in the 2022–23 academic year are listed here.

• For some assessments you may be required to print large format posters for presentations at a cost of £5–£10 per poster.
• Most coursework submissions are electronic but you may wish to print notes and should budget up to £100 for printing.
• Course books are available from the university but you may wish to budget up to £200 to buy your own copies.
• Some courses include an optional placement module for which students will need to cover the costs of travel to and from the placement and DBS checks as required.
• Supervision fees: £1,170 for each full year. Estimated based on £45 per hour with fortnightly meetings. In some agencies, supervision will be provided at no cost. Where students have to pay, the cost will only begin when supervision begins.
• Personal counselling/therapy: £2,000–£2,800 over the course. Estimated based on £40 per hour.
• For a number of courses you will have the opportunity to attend field trips and off-site visits. These are optional and are not required to pass your course but under normal circumstances we would expect a budget of approximately £150 per year will cover the costs of particular trips. The amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken.
• You will have access to computers and necessary software, however many students choose to buy their own hardware, software and accessories. The amount spent will depend on your individual choices but this expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses.

You can chat with our enquiries team if you have a question or need more information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Location and student life

Campus where this course is taught

Moulsecoomb campus

Two miles north of Brighton seafront, Moulsecoomb is our largest campus and student village. Moulsecoomb has been transformed by a recent development of our estate. On campus you'll find new Students' Union, events venue, and sports and fitness facilities, alongside the library and student centre.

Over 900 students live here in our halls, Moulsecoomb Place and the new Mithras halls – Brunswick, Goldstone, Hanover, Preston and Regency.

Moulsecoomb has easy access to buses and trains and to all the exciting things happening in our home city.

Your Brighton Boost 2024 – up to £1,750 to help new undergrad students with study, accommodation or travel costs. Find out more...

Accommodation

We guarantee an offer of a place in halls of residence to all eligible students . So if you applied for halls by the deadline you are guaranteed a room in our halls of residence.

Brighton: Moulsecoomb

Halls of residence We have self-catered halls on all our campuses, within minutes of your classes, and other options that are very nearby.

You can apply for any of our halls, but the options closest to your study location are:

• Mithras Halls are stylish new high-rises in the heart of the student village at our revitalised Moulsecoomb campus with ensuite rooms for more than 800 students.
• Varley Park  is a popular dedicated halls site, offering a mix of rooms and bathroom options at different prices. It is around two miles from Moulsecoomb campus and four miles from the city centre, and is easy to get to by bus.

Want to live independently? We can help – find out more about private renting .

Modern accommodation at Moulsecoomb

Relaxing in halls near the campus

Student Union social space at Moulsecoomb

About Brighton

The city of Brighton & Hove is a forward-thinking place which leads the way in the arts, technology, sustainability and creativity. You'll find living here plays a key role in your learning experience.

Brighton is a leading centre for creative media technology, recently named the startup capital of the UK.

The city is home to a national 5G testbed and over 1,000 tech businesses. The digital sector is worth over £1bn a year to the local economy - as much as tourism.

All of our full-time undergraduate courses involve work-based learning - this could be through placements, live briefs and guest lectures. Many of these opportunities are provided by local businesses and organisations.

It's only 50 minutes by train from Brighton to central London and less than 40 minutes to Eastbourne. There are also daily direct trains to Bristol, Bedford, Cambridge, Gatwick Airport, Portsmouth and Southampton.

Moulsecoomb campus map

Support and wellbeing

Your course team

Your personal academic tutor, course leader and other tutors are all there to help you with your personal and academic progress. You'll also have a student support and guidance tutor (SSGT) who can help with everything from homesickness, managing stress or accommodation issues.

Your academic skills

Our Brighton Student Skills Hub gives you extra support and resources to develop the skills you'll need for university study, whatever your level of experience so far.

Your mental health and wellbeing

As well as being supported to succeed, we want you to feel good too. You'll be part of a community that builds you up, with lots of ways to connect with one another, as well having access to dedicated experts if you need them. Find out more .

Sport at Brighton

Sport Brighton

Sport Brighton brings together our sport and recreation services. As a Brighton student you'll have use of sport and fitness facilities across all our campuses and there are opportunities to play for fun, fitness or take part in serious competition. 

Find out more about Sport Brighton .

Sports scholarships

Our sports scholarship scheme is designed to help students develop their full sporting potential to train and compete at the highest level. We offer scholarships for elite athletes, elite disabled athletes and talented sports performers.

Find out more about sport scholarships .

Stay in touch

Ask a question about this course

If you have a question about this course, our enquiries team will be happy to help.

01273 644644

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A Maker Project: Writing about Material Culture

During the fall of 2015, I designed and taught an advanced composition course with inspiration from syllabi of Vanessa Kramer Sohan and Malea Powell. Because my dissertation research centers around the text(ile) work of a quilt project—one that advocates awareness of migrant lives lost along the US/Mexico border through quilts—I wanted to create a course that asked students to work through some key questions concerning writing about, engaging with, analyzing, and making material things. With my research interests in mind, I created a course that asked students to “compose” a material object [1] while considering the rhetorical value of material things.   I wanted students to experience the composing of things alongside composing written texts to compare their processes and be critical of their processes.

We had five maker days during the semester. For the first two maker days students worked in class either with their own materials or with materials I brought for them: origami, mandala coloring, knitting, crocheting, and zine materials. Some students brought their own projects and others didn’t even know where to begin. Some tried knitting for the first time watching a youtube video; some worked on a mandala with their headphones on; some formed origami groups comparing end products and sharing tips as they practiced each animal or flower. At first, they didn’t really know what to make of maker days. They thought this was such a cool class because they didn’t have to “do” anything English on maker days. However, as the semester progressed, they worked on their own maker projects on maker days, and they expressed that their minds were busy contemplating the scholarship we read and discussed. As they applied (or at least considered) some theory to the practice of making it suddenly was a more critical practice. They thought more carefully about their rhetorical choices knowing they would have to explain those choices in the end. Most importantly for them, a grade was attached to the making of this thing.

For their final reflection in the course, I asked students to name and explain a metaphor to describe their making process and a metaphor to describe their writing process. Then they compared the two processes. One student compared their writing process to a marathon, taking careful preparation, and compared their making process to the birthing process of sea turtles: the mother sculpting the sand and laying eggs (as they gather their materials) and then the baby turtles hatch and make their way on an unknown journey to sea (as they begin their making not knowing how the thing will turn out or what difficulties are ahead). Another student said they felt like a merchant navigator during their writing process because they plot out their destinations before setting sail, and they felt like a explorer navigator during their making process because they do not know the destination and set out for the sake of the experience. At this point, I think students could finally see how this advanced composition course addressed composing as a rhetorical process (although always nuanced) regardless of the end product. In their reflection, a student said they felt like they were in the movie Inception throughout the class because we were writing about writings (assigned readings), reflecting on the idea of reflection, and creating a thing while writing, reading, and reflecting about the very thing they were creating. That’s exactly what I was aiming for: metacognition about composition.

Another challenge that ultimately worked out was assessing this maker project. The main question I get from other instructors is “How do you grade something like this?” First of all, the project was three parts (the object, the presentation, and the reflection) each of which had a rubric. Also, part of the making portion had weekly check-ins that discussed the work on the object that week. However, I tailored a rubric that I use in a technical writing course I teach. It was a great starting point to understand the expectations of quality of work (not in materials) but in effort and time. We talked through the language of the rubrics so that students had a clear understanding of the quality of work I expected.

[1] I use object and thing interchangeably here not because they are the same, but because scholars use them differently and without consensus about what constitutes each term.

[2]  A trace paper traces one term or concept through various texts and authors to understand it  more thoroughly—contested or nuanced definitions and uses, development, and salient features of the term or concept.

Sonia C. Arellano is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation tentatively titled “Quilting the Migrant Trail: Crafted Rhetorical Text(iles) and (Counter) Narratives” explores what lives are deemed grievable through the rhetorical contributions of quilt projects that memorialize migrant lives.

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Dissertation: INSCRIBED ADMINISTRATIVE MATERIAL CULTURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UMAYYAD STATE IN SYRIA-PALESTINE 661-750 CE

The seventh century CE in the Near East was an era characterized by major political transition and cultural change, representing a historical epoch that witnessed the decline of the region’s long-standing major political institutions alongside the emergence of a powerful Arab Caliphate that supplanted both the offices of the Byzantine Emperor and the Persian, Sasanid Shah in most or all of the region. This Arab Caliphate, first based out of the Hejaz, then out of Syria-Palestine with the rise of the Umayyads (r. 661-750 CE), the first hereditary dynasty of the Islamic period, embarked on a campaign of Arab and Muslim hegemony across three continents within the course of a century. Some of the Umayyad’s successes in terms of both the acquisition of and projection of power were not only the result of an organized and determined military and a steady stream of income from its territorial acquisitions, but also due to their ability to construct institutions and bureaucratic machinery that allowed them to create and control narratives through the production of inscribed material culture. Through various administrative and institutional mechanisms, the Umayyad caliphs were able to universalize the Arabic language and script and, by extension, promote a doctrinal form of Islam, both of which were accelerated by the development and expansion of their state and which played a critical role in the attempt to validate their political claims. Most importantly, an Umayyad monopoly on the cursive Arabic script, an orthography initially used by Christian missionaries in the Levant and Arabia in the sixth century, led to its appropriation for administrative uses by the Muslims which was then wielded as a source of political capital. The weaponization of the Arabic orthography enabled the Umayyads to decisively institute and enforce a new linguistic, cultural, religious and political order over the Near East in the era of Late Antiquity. The extant inscribed material culture implicates the Umayyads as graphophiles, obsessed with the written word and cognizant of its qualities and abilities in helping them impose their political will on their opponents in a battle for cultural, political and ideological primacy. Thus, this dissertation serves as an archaeolinguistic study of how the Umayyads instrumentalized and exploited the Arabic script on administrative material culture as instruments of authority and as purveyors of a new order in the region.

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Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego

Błażej Cecota

Administration of the Arabic World: from Tribalism to the Umayyad Caliphate, [in:] Byzantium and the Arabs. The Encounter of Civilizations from Sixth to Mid-Eighth Century, ed. T. Wolińska, P. Filipczak, Łódź 2015, 315-337 (H. Badawy)

Katharina Meinecke

Nasser Rabbat

Edward P. Zychowicz-Coghill

Antonia Bosanquet

This special issue arose out of a conference hosted by the RomanIslam Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies (Universität Hamburg) in March 2021. The conference, entitled "The Umayyads from West to East: New Perspectives" focused on intra-Empire comparison between the Umayyads of the West and the East and on the relevance of various Roman and Late Antique contexts to the conceptualization of Umayyad rule. However, the lens through which most contributors chose to analyze this question, and a recurring topic in the subsequent discussions, was the relevance of transregional Umayyad memory, particularly from the perspective of the Islamic West. The entries in this volume are grouped around this focus, examining different ways in which transregional Umayyad memories influenced, and were influenced by, the culture of the Islamic West.

Ilkka Lindstedt

Der Islam 2023; 100 (2), The Umayyads from West to East: New Perspectives

Elsa Cardoso

This special issue arose out of a conference hosted by the RomanIslam Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies (Universität Hamburg) in March 2021. The conference, entitled "The Umayyads from West to East: New Perspectives" focused on intra-Empire comparison between the Umayyads of the West and the East and on the relevance of various Roman and Late Antique contexts to the conceptualization of Umayyad rule. However, the lens through which most contributors chose to analyze this question, and a recurring topic in the subsequent discussions, was the relevance of transregional Umayyad memory, particularly from the perspective of the Islamic West. The entries in this volume are grouped around this focus, examining different ways in which transregional Umayyad memories influenced, and were influenced by, the culture of the Islamic West. Mnemohistory, or the study of the past as it was remembered, constructed, and recontextualized, has been a thriving area of inquiry in the humanities since the studies of Maurice Halbwachs (1939) on collective memory and those by Aleida and Jan Assmann (1992, 2012) on cultural memory more specifically.1 Its impact on the study of Islamic history has been significant and has led to important advances in the field. Particularly prominent studies include Antoine Borrut's analysis of Umayyad memories in Syria (2011),2 Sarah Savant's book on pre-Islamic memories in Iran (2013), Heather Keaney's work on the remembrance of the rebellion against ʿUthmān, and Tayeb El-Hibri's research on the memories of the Rāshidūn (2010) and the Umayyad rulers (2002). The instrumentalization of the past is also an important topic in the studies of early Islamic historiography by Boaz Shoshan (2016), Fred Donner (1998), and more recently, in Manan Ahmed Asif's study of the Chachnama and its creative context (2016). 1 For a survey of the field, see Erll and Nünning 2008. 2 See also the collected volume edited by Antoine Borrut and Paul Cobb (2010).

George Hatke

The Umayyad World

Andrew Marsham

Tareq A. Ramadan

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Historians and Material Culture

Sarah Jones Weicksel | Jan 26, 2015

This is one of a series of AHA Today posts on subjects of importance to the history profession that were discussed at the 2015 annual meeting. The author,  Sarah Jones Weicksel, is a PhD candidate in US history and a fellow at the Center for the Study for Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago. She is currently at work on her dissertation, entitled “The Fabric of War: Clothing, Culture and Violence in the American Civil War Era.” She received an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware and a BA in history from Yale University. She can be reached at [email protected] .

The 2015 AHA annual meeting, themed “History and the Other Disciplines,” brought together sessions that engaged with anthropology, material culture, archaeology, visual studies, and museum studies, among many others. This seems a fruitful moment to address a growing interest in material culture, most broadly defined as all human-made objects; the availability of resources for historians to access its study; and the influence of material culture on the way historians research and teach history.

A few of the objects in my own teaching collection that I combine with texts and images for in-class exercises: a late 19th-century stereoscope and photograph, a circa-1920 cast iron toy stove, and reproduction pottery. These are some of the objects I use in my historical methodology course for senior U.S history majors.

Many historians who teach expect students to identify a broad range of materials as sources—from manuscripts and maps, to government records and newspapers, to photographs and archaeological artifacts. Attending panels on teaching and primary sources at the annual meeting, I found that those instructors who have worked with objects and images in their classrooms had positive experiences with students’ responses to these material artifacts. In my own courses, I have found that asking my students to engage with images and objects both expands their approach to research projects, and emboldens their ability to think more critically about the textual sources with which they are more—and perhaps too—comfortable. (For more on teaching with objects, see   Abby Chandler’s article   from last April’s   Perspectives on History. ) Despite a desire to encourage students to think more broadly about historians’ evidentiary base, experienced historians, too, are more comfortable with textual sources; in our own broader conversations at the annual meeting, we regularly invoked the language of documents, reading, and textual analysis to explain how we expected students to engage with historical evidence. Words, as historian Leora Auslander has noted , continue to be our own stock-in-trade.

Some may ask, why should I make the effort to learn about the study of material culture? Indeed, if we simply view objects as illustrations or substitutes for texts, there would seem to be little value added by engaging in this undertaking. But material artifacts are   not   substitutes for texts. Rather, they offer an alternative evidentiary means of approaching the past that transcends the domain of language. Material culture provides access to the past as it was experienced with all five of the senses; access to the palpable past that shaped the worldviews of historical actors. Objects, images, and texts provide different pieces to the same historical puzzle—interlocking to provide a clearer, more complete picture of history.

As Joan Cashin noted at the panel I organized, “War Material: Perspectives on the Study of the Material Culture in the United States and Europe,” a growing number of historians   do   see the value added by studying material culture. This ongoing development raised pressing questions during the session: If I want to teach with “things,” how do I gain access to them? And how do I design effective assignments and in-class exercises for my students? In conversations, colleagues recounted frustration with possessing insufficient knowledge about analyzing and teaching with objects and images. Similarly, they expressed a desire to work with objects in their own research, but felt they lacked the authority to fully incorporate material culture into their evidence. How do we expand and refine our research and teaching methodologies to include material culture? Few doctoral programs in history intentionally train students in material culture—indeed, my own background is the combined product of attending a material culture master’s program and working with a doctoral adviser for whom objects are central to her own intellectual project. Where can established historians starting from scratch go for the necessary support?

Many historians turn to museums for help. During our session, Sara Hume, curator at the Kent State Museum, expressed curators’ eagerness to engage with and support professors and their students; and both Sophie White and Catherine Whalen articulated some of the many insights historians stand to gain from engaging with curators who have in-depth knowledge of their collections. But while some museums—including university museums—have teaching collections designed to give students tactile experiences with material artifacts, many do not. In these instances, instructors—including myself and James Seaver—who wish to incorporate into the classroom objects that students can physically handle often find themselves acquiring their own teaching collections by digging around in attics or antique stores. How might we open up a more intentional dialogue with local and national museums to generate opportunities for our students and ourselves? Might departments consider ways to establish teaching collections of images and objects to which their faculty have access?

During the course of the annual meeting, I found a rippling aspiration to expand the sources through which we approach our research and enliven history for our students, and yet, I also sensed an undercurrent of dismay about the challenges of acquiring both the skills and the access to objects in order to do so. How can we—as advisers, instructors, departments, museums and organizations—support historians’ efforts to expand the materials with which we work and teach? To increase the resources that we have at our disposal? As interest in incorporating material and visual culture into the work of history continues to swell, we must be more intentional about providing the scaffolding for continuing education in research and teaching methodologies, access to sources, training in proper handling of objects, and forums through which to learn from one another’s insights into the material worlds of the past.

This post first appeared on AHA Today .

Tags: AHA Today 2015 Annual Meeting Teaching Resources and Strategies

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