This course explores the meanings various
artifacts?from pictures, photographs and exhibits
to food, clothing and money -- acquire in different
social, historical, and political contexts
and the ways in which these meanings are contested
by a variety of social actors. Special emphasis
will be given to the ways in which we relate to the past
through the use of material culture. Questions
that will be addressed include: Do commodities and other
items of material culture merely fulfill
human needs, or are they also symbols that reveal certain
things about their users? What kind of light can items
of material culture shed on matters of social
structure and inequality, values and morality, or
processes of change at particular historical
moments? How is material culture used in the service
of representing, remembering and forgetting the
past? What constitutes ''heritage'' and who owns it? How
should ''heritage'' be preserved, displayed,
remembered? How is cultural heritage packaged
and marketed in the context of tourism and how
does tourism change the meaning of
material culture and cultural practices?
|