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Art
History 800 |
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The title of this course comes from a paradox in American ceramic history. From the earliest English settlement and for the next 250 years, ceramics in America were overwhelmingly not American-made, but came from cultures and industries in Britain, Europe, and Asia. (What took so long?) "Ceramics in America" has hence become the accepted code phrase for material culture analysis of those fired clay objects used in America rather than only those made there. Students in the course will intensively study and use material culture methods
and ideas to investigate early American cultural practices and objects
related to ceramics and their use. Those social practices include food
and drink consumption, preservation, storage, and disposal. Objects will
be studied from the Elvehjem and Milwaukee Art Museum collections and
the Chipstone Foundation. Course members will additionally have an extraordinary
special opportunity to examine British ceramic objects, with a study loan
of chamber pots made from Roman to Victorian times collected by the esteemed
historical archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume. We will interrogate historic
period documents, literature and visual sources, read broadly in the literature
of historical archaeology, decorative arts, visual culture, and history,
and investigate web-based exhibitions and sources. The course will require
intensive reading, field trips, primary research, as well as exercises
and papers. Attendance once a week is, of course, required along with
occasional field trips. P: Graduate standing only |