HSTCMP 590 Topics in History

“Thinking through Things:  Objects, Desire, and the Birth of Globalization”
This seminar takes a simultaneously traditional yet insistently innovative approach to the study of the past.  On the one hand, history has been broadly understood through and commonly embodied by objects, an approach that has guided churches and temples, courts and collectors, for ages:  to grasp an object from the past has been, in a fundamental way, to grasp the past itself.  On the other hand, professional historians have been preoccupied over the last few centuries (since the Renaissance, in fact) with the texts of the past—with the words recorded in Assyrian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri, in Greek and Latin “classics,” in Chinese and Sanskrit documents, in state and local archives, and so on—and scholars have, by and large, privileged writing as a gateway to historical research.  Recently, however, history has taken a material turn.  By deploying new techniques and methods, and by approaching their subject from fresh and previously unexplored perspectives, historians have lately endeavored to study the past through its material remnants—not so much archeological remains (which have always been and will continue to be a viable source for history) as the very “things” that have come down to us over time.  This has afforded a more nuanced and wider ranging history, one that extends beyond the text.  This has also granted historians a terrific narrative opportunity, as things tell marvelous stories in ways that can be richer, more layered, and more rewarding than mere text.
The things of history span an enormous range of material artifacts.  They might fall under the rubric of high “art,” derive from religious practices or pertain to the business of the state, or simply reflect the myriad things pertaining to everyday life.  Things from the past, furthermore, mark not only a moment and “history” situated in time and space; they can also mediate history.  They can serve as vital go-betweens for cultural, commercial, and colonial transactions (to name just a few possibilities).  And they can be global, since material objects can also move:  from the past to the present, from producers to consumers, from distant cultures to imperial museums, and so on.  It is precisely these material mediations, these global itineraries, and these distinct moments that furnish us with the “things” of history:  the stuff that we, as historians, try to investigate and interrogate to recover the past.  This seminar introduces students to a range of things from a variety of media.  It also introduces a number of key archives that house these artifacts—libraries, collections, museums.  And it tries to tease out stories from these archives and artifacts—from curious things and their histories.  The ultimate goal of the seminar is for its participants to identify, research, and compose a history of an artifact of their choosing.  In doing so, it is the hope that we will collectively learn not only how to analyze the objects of history, but also how to question the things that have reached us and to narrate some of the many stories they convey.