300 Level Courses
HISP 302-01 Preservation Law
HISP 303-01 Archives and Society
HISP 305A-01 American Building
HISP 305A-02 American Building
HISP 309-01 Preservation and Economic Development
HISP 310-01 Decorative Arts
HISP 311 Evolution of the American Landscape
HISP 312 Landscape Preservation
HISP 320-01 American Forms and Values
HISP 320-02 American Forms and Values
HISP 325 Vernacular Architecture in America
HISP 345 Computer Applications in Historic Preservation
HISP 360 International Preservation
HISP 361-01 Managing Cultural Resources
UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION
HISP 320-01 AMERICAN FORMS AND VALUES
Assoc. Prof. Douglas Sanford
MWF: 10:00-10:50 AM
Fall 2007
Combs 139
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course investigates the cultural environment of the values and material objects that shaped America. We explore this environment’s chronological evolution from the arrival of European and African colonists, through developing rural and urban traditions, through the decades of industrialization that affected America's rise to global prominence, and to the advent of post-modern America. The course's framework stems from the central tenet that Americans' mental cultures (world views, beliefs, values) maintained a constant dynamic with their everyday material culture of landscapes, houses, and objects. Hence, this course offers an introduction to studying artifacts that Americans made and used, and of how scholars of differing perspectives unravel the messages held by objects. Similarly, the course examines how ideas, both conscious and subconscious, guided peoples' actions and became manifested in material fashion. Since the 1960s scholars in anthropology, archaeology, art history, folklore, geography, history, and historic preservation have recognized that artifact interpretation can play an important role in deciphering and interpreting the American past. Similarly, modern Americans regularly receive direct and indirect reminders of how today's world, intellectually and physically, is a product of past mental and material worlds. This course encourages students to explore these past worlds and consider their influence on today’s generations and for historic preservation.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
(1) Provide an intellectual survey of how various scholars "read" and decipher material culture, thereby promoting an interdisciplinary approach to the topic that is more analytical than descriptive.
(2) Create an informed awareness of how material culture studies relate to historic preservation and offer valuable research tools and methodologies. The course provides opportunities to employ these methods in relation to historic and modern artifacts, documents, and other research resources.
(3) Distinguish fashion and consumer behaviors from the social contexts and cultural explanations for these activities.
(4) Provide practical experience in developing and undertaking historical research and in the scholarly reporting of research results.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
I. TEXTS: Required: James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten. Selected readings on reserve via Blackboard and on-line.
II. TESTS: A Mid-Term exam on September 26th, and the final exam on December 10th.
III. RESEARCH AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: Each student will complete two written assignments that are discussed in class and for which handouts are provided. The first, due October 26th, is a paper of 5-7 pages that explicates the interplay between American forms and values in a period document. Students can choose between the analysis of a court case and a probate inventory analysis. This discussion will consider social statuses, period ideology and context, the built environment, and material objects. The second assignment, due December 7th, combines a focused research proposal (5-7 pages) with a “working” bibliography for an aspect of American material culture chosen by the student. As a research design the proposal defines a hypothesis concerning a category of material culture and its associated values and, advances methods and sources to carry the research forward.
TAKE NOTICE: LATE PAPERS WILL BE DOWN GRADED (10% per day);
ALL ASSIGNMENTS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO COMPLETE THE CLASS.
IV. GRADING: The following categories define the basis for determining the final grade:
1. Mid-Term Exam: 20%
2. First Writing Assignment: 25%
3. Second Writing Assignment: 25%
4. Final Exam: 20%
5. Class participation: 10%
In keeping with the College’s +/- grading system, the following numerical divisions will be used to determine letter grades:
A: 94-100; A-: 90-93; B+: 87-89; B: 83-86; B-: 80-82; C+: 77-79;
C: 73-76; C-: 70-72; D+: 67-69; D: 60-66; F: < 60%.
V. IN-CLASS DISCUSSION & BEHAVIOR: Comments, questions, and discussion are strongly encouraged. Students may express their opinions, but in a manner relevant to the course, respectful of others’ right to participate in discussions, and not disruptive to the class. Similarly, cell phones are prohibited, except for emergency purposes.
INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION
Office hours (Combs 133): M.: 1-2 PM; Tu.: 11:00 AM -12 noon; W.: 2-3 PM; Th.: 11:00 AM – 12 noon; F.: 1-2 PM; and by appointment. I strongly encourage you to see me if you have questions about the content of lectures and readings, or need assistance with assignments. Office phone: 540-654-1314; home phone: 540-373-9747 (Please call after 8:00 PM). I work best by e-mail: dsanford@umw.edu.
CLASS SCHEDULE
8/27 Course Introduction; and Exploring Material Culture Definitions.
8/29 Artifacts, Objects, and the American Experience.
Reading: Deetz, Chpt. 1.
8/31 Material Culture Perspectives and Approaches.
Reading: Ann Smart Martin & J. Ritchie Garrison, “Shaping the Field: The Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Material Culture.” (1997), pp. 1-20.
9/3 Material Culture in Action: Approaches to Understanding American Forms and Values.
9/5 Advertising and Modern American Material Culture: Clothing & Gender.
Reading: Peter & Janet Phillips, “History from Below: Women’s Underwear and the Rise of Women’s Sport.”
9/7 Clothing & Gender (continued).
9/10 Car Culture.
Reading: Flink, “Automobility”.
9/12 Cars (continued). Modern Foodways: Mass Marketing and the Production of American Food & Drink.
Reading: Peter Singer & Jim Mason, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Chpts. 1, 2).
9/14 Foodways (continued).
Reading: “Evolution of the Ice Cream Stand”.
9/17 Modern American Sports and Sporting Values.
Reading: Kaaren R. Staveteig, “A Sporting World: The Building Legacy of Chicago’s Athletic Clubs” (2006), pp. 7-16; OR, Henry Moss, “From Exercise to Eating: Adapting a Historic Athletic Facility” (2006), pp. 161-168.
9/19 The Material Culture of the Dead.
Reading: Deetz, Chpt. 4; Stilgoe, pp. 219-231.
9/21 Cemeteries: Land of the Living Dead.
Reading: Thomas Bender, “The Rural Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the Appeal of Nature.”
9/24 The Modern American Way of Death.
Reading: “An Unheralded Preservation Influence: The American Funeral Industry”.
9/26 MID-TERM EXAMINATION
9/28 On the Paper Trail, I: Artifacts, Facts, Manuscripts and the Study of Material Things.
Reading: Camille Wells, "The Planter's Prospect: Houses, Outbuildings, and Rural Landscape in 18th-Century Virginia (Winterthur Portfolio, 1993).
Receive First Assignment Handout
Readings for assignments only: Read either A.G. Roeber, “Authority, Law, and Custom: The Rituals of Court Day in Tidewater Virginia, 1720-1750" (from St. George, pp. 419-437; or Ann Smart Martin, “Frontier Boys and Country Cousins: The Context for Choice in Eighteenth-Century Consumerism,” from Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard Herman (1997), pp. 71-102 and Mark R. Wenger, “The Dining Room in Early Virginia,” (from Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, edited by Thomas Carter and Bernard Herman (1989), pp. 149-159.
10/1 On the Paper Trail, II: Case Study.
10/3 Native Americans - New World Settlers before Columbus.
Reading: James H. Merrell, "The Indians’ New World: The Catawba Experience" (from St. George, pp. 95-113; relevant for first assignment).
10/5 Native Americans (continued). The Nature of Frontiers and Frontier Systems.
10/8 Frontiers (continued). The Spanish Americas: The Hispanic Colonial World System.
Reading: Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America, pp. 33-43.
10/10 Spanish (continued). New England Towns and Villages.
Reading: Joseph S. Wood, “Village and Community in Early Colonial New England” (from St. George, pp. 159-169).
10/12 New England (continued). "In Dispers'd Country Plantations": Settling Down in the South.
Reading: Garry Wheeler Stone, “The Roof Leaked, But the Price was Right: The Virginia House Reconsidered” (2004).
10/15 NO CLASS – FALL BREAK
10/17 South (continued). Agrarian Communities, Pre-Industrial America, and the inroads of Consumerism.
Reading: Deetz, Chpts. 2, 3; Dennis J. Pogue, “The Transformation of America: Georgian Sensibility, Capitalist Conspiracy, or Consumer Revolution?” (2001), pp. 41-57.
10/19 Georgian Foodways and Polite Society.
Reading: Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” (from St. George, pp. 439-462) .
10/22 The Georgian Mind-Set and Architecture.
Reading: Deetz, Chpt. 5.
Colonial Williamsburg website on the Consumer Revolution: http://research.history.org/Historical_Research/Research_Themes/ThemeRespect/ConsumerRev.cfm
10/24 Georgian Gardens and Grounds (landscape as material culture).
10/26 Foodways and Cultural Life.
Video: Food and Life.
FIRST WRITING ASSIGNMENT DUE
10/29 Halloween and Alcohol: Food, Society, and Seasonal Festivals.
Reading: Singer & Mason, The Way We Eat (Chpts. 13, 16).
10/31 Honor & Shame I: Community Values.
Reading: Deetz, Chpts. 7, 8.
Second paper handout and introduction.
11/2 Research Methods & Design (cont’d.). Honor & Shame II.
Reading: Dell Upton, “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," (from St. George, pp. 357-369).
11/5 Discussion Day 1 (half of class)
11/7 Research Methods Demonstration: Architecture from Documents.
The Farm as Factory: Agricultural Technology and Agribusiness.
11/9 Agriculture (continued).
11/12 Standardizing Building Methods & Modern Spaces: Hallways & Bathrooms.
Reading: Kenneth Ames, "Meaning in Artifacts: Hall Furnishings in Victorian America," from Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, edited by Dell Upton & John Vlach, 1986.
11/14 Bathrooms (continued). Bedrooms.
Reading: Elizabeth Collins Cromley, “A History of American Beds and Bedrooms, 1890-1930” (1992), pp. 120-141.
11/16 Discussion Day 2 (other half of class)
11/19 Thanksgiving: A Ritual’s Tradition, Myth, and Evolution.
11/21, 23 NO CLASS - THANKSGIVING BREAK
11/26 The Move to Suburbia and New Senses of Community.
Reading: Dolores Hayden, “Streetcar Buildouts” (pp. 71-96) or Dawn S. Bowen, “Richmond’s African-American Commercial District: The Rise and Decline of ‘The Deuce’” (pp. 57-67).
11/28 The Changing Face and Technology of War.
11/30 War and Historic Preservation.
Reading: “Betting Against History” from Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (2006).
12/3 The Material Culture of Yardscapes: Meanings for “lawn art.”
12/5 Closing Application: American Cultural Values and Barbie.
Video: Barbie Nation.
12/7 Christmas and Material Spirituality.
SECOND WRITING ASSIGNMENT DUE
FINAL EXAMINATION: Monday, December 10th, 8:30 – 11:00 AM.
The Office of Disability Services has been designated by the University as the primary office to guide, counsel, and assist students with disabilities. If you receive services through that office and require accommodations for this class, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible to discuss your approved accommodation needs. Bring your accommodation letter with you to the appointment. I will hold any information you share with me in the strictest confidence unless you give me permission to do otherwise. If you need accommodations, (note taking assistance, extended time for tests, etc.), I would be happy to refer you to the Office of Disability Services. They will require appropriate documentation of a disability. Their phone number is 540-654-1266.