The Making of Americans: Material Culture and the Immigrant Experience

The study of material culture, an inquiry into the meaning of things, has grown dramatically in the past two decades. Drawing on theories and methodology from a wide variety of disciplines - anthropology, folklore, and history among them - material culture explores the variety of ways in which physical objects structure communal activity, mediate between the private and the public, articulate religious beliefs, and shape identity. This seminar introduces students to the theories and methodologies of material culture by focusing on how immigrants over the past century, especially Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, drew on things - on clothing and furniture.