Module description
The purpose of this module is to introduce students to World History through material culture. The main objects and configurations of material culture, from the body as commodity to cowries as money, will be analysed in this course. Food, drinks, drugs, fabrics, dress, houses, furniture, interior decoration, urban planning and gardens structure a diversified programme. The circulation of objects around the world, in some cases under different materials and forms, will open the way to consider cultural exchange between different civilisations, meaning forms of transfer, contamination, adaptation and refusal.
Further information on 5AAH1009: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=5889610&chapterid=544889
Assessment details
Coursework (100%)
1 x 1,500-word formative essay; 1 x 3,000-word essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
Indicative Topics
What is material culture?
Concepts of circulation
Objects and identities
Money
Food and drugs
Clothing
Cities
Houses and Gardens
Bodies
Teaching pattern
10 x 2-hour seminar (weekly)
Suggested reading list
This is suggested reading and purchase of these books is not mandatory.
Appadurai, A., (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986). Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984).
Brewer, J., and Porter, R., (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (1993).
Douglas, M., and Isherwood, B., The World of Goods. Towards an anthropology of consumption (1979)
Findlen, P., (ed.), Early Modern Things (2012)
Gerritsen, A., and Riello, G., (eds), Writing Material Culture History (2014).
Harvey, K., (ed), History and Material Culture (2009).
Jordanova, L., The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (2012).
Schama, S., The Embarrassment of Riches (1987).