The H-Net Network on Material Culture and Vernacular Landscapes and Artifact Preservation will promote and support the study of objects, buildings, sites, structures, landscapes and other material cultural productions as part of the visual record of life.
We welcome announcements, CFP's, queries, contributions, and discussions of all things material! To add yours, click the orange "Start a Discussion" button above this text.
And we tweet, too! https://twitter.com/H_Mat_Culture
You can see Recent Queries and Recent Discussions below, and Recent Announcements at the bottom of the page. All CFP's posted to the site can be found in the link on the right.
Dear Fellow Material Culturalists,
I've just come across what is (to me) a totally unfamiliar material medium: Renaissance "grotesque" tapestries. I study monstrous births (conjoined twins and the like), and I was wondering if anyone could tell me whether the "grotesque" features in such tapestries ever included humans or animals with unusual physical features? I'm not so much interested in mythological bodies as actual, historical births.
I am once again teaching my senior seminar in consumer culture in early Anglo-America. I would like my students to get a sense of the "other side" of consumer culture; I am assigning an article on secondhand clothing, an article about a confidence man (Tom Bell), and Toby Ditz's "Shipwrecked." I would like to assign a chapter/article on shoplifting. I know about When Ladies Go A-Thieving. But I swear years ago I had my students read about shoplifting. Now I can't find it anywhere. I've searched JSTOR and online to no avail. Am I crazy?
I’m researching the social history of tea among Indigenous peoples and European traders/settlers/explorers in Colonial Canada and am seeking historical references to the following:
Hi Patrick and Carma,
I'm actually just finalizing my new syllabus that uses 20th century American Craft Practices and Communities as the focus for an introductory course in American Studies. There is a lot of good stuff between the various areas of art and design, craft, DIY, and Maker Culture but I understand I can't make freshman read more than 30 academic pages a week. There is a nice treasure trove on craftivism in Utopian Studies V.22,i. 2 and I'd recommend several books:
Hiya folks,
Our colleagues over at H-PCAACA recently hosted a Space in Popular Culture month. It happened to coincide with the opening of a new space exhibit at the museum where I work so I wrote a modest meditation about an object from spacey popular culture moving to a museum. It's called, and I hope you'll enjoy, "The 7,000 Pound Astronaut in the Room."
Greetings!
We are delighted to begin a new forum today in collaboration with Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Studies.
This thoughtful discussion on the fair market value of museum jobs continues the previous discussion on the museum sacrifice measure. (Scroll down past the goofy Mona Lisa photo.) This time the author takes into consideration the prospects of landing careers in academia.
The start of October and the recent CFP for the Making Home conference remind me that we are coming up on the autumnal academic conference season. Soon, pages of pre-written papers will be fluttering from speakers hands like leaves falling from trees, the two or three attendees at morning sessions will be clutching pumpkin spice lattes, and the sun will be setting earlier and earlier on those who wonder off to post conference happy hours.
Many of us who subscribe to H-Material Culture are highly educated and many of us also do museum work in some way (picture the Venn diagram...) So I thought I'd pass along this recent blog post about The Museum Sacrifice Measure .
Registration Now Open for VAF Chicago 2015!
Please join us for the Vernacular Architecture Forum's 35th Annual Conference in Chicago from June 3 – 7, 2015.
https://www.facebook.com/americanstudiesassoc
Over the next two weeks, beginning on Monday 19 January, the Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association will be guest-curating the ASA’s social media. We’ll share resources in the field and consider new ways to think about objects and use objects in our classrooms—and in our research and in our life. Please join the conversation and spread the word!
Please forgive the multiple postings.
"Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond"
NEH Summer Institute
July 6-July 31, 2015
Deadline for applications March 2, 2015
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York
NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers
At the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York City, July 7-31, 2015.
Objects matter. Material culture scholars use artifactual evidence such as consumer goods, architecture, clothing, landscape, decorative arts, and many other types of material.
In(ter)ventions: object histories outside and inside the museum
"Teaching the History of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond"
NEH Summer Institute
July 6-July 31, 2015
Deadline for applications March 2, 2015
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
H-Material-Culture is pleased to host a new page of content delivered hot and fresh from the Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association. The page, moderated by Deborah Andrews and titled "The American Studies Association Material Culture Caucus," will feature the latest resources, announcements, discussions, and whatever else the active and thriving caucus produces.
American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York
NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers
At the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York City, July 6-31, 2015.
Objects matter. Material culture scholars use artifactual evidence such as consumer goods, architecture, clothing, landscape, decorative arts, and many other types of material.
Dear Colleagues,
The Islamic Manuscript Association is delighted to announce that it is accepting applications to its Annual Grant Scheme, which is designed to further any activities that support the needs of manuscript collections, particularly in the area of collection care and management and in advancing scholarship related to Islamic manuscripts. Work that we support includes but is not limited to:
» Activities related to preservation, conservation and digitisation;
