Object Studies Introductions to Material Culture

Object Studies: Introductions to Material Culture is a textbook that introduces students to an interdisciplinary approach to material cultural study. This text helps reveal how everyday objects from pens and coffee cups to our most cherished keepsakes help define our collective histories and personal narratives. Object Studies is organized around accessible and engaging chapters on objects with “model  essays” that present original projects designed to engage students with a series of concepts and research activities. Each will demonstrate a key methodology tied to specific learning outcomes, but all chapters will be intertwined in their attention to the project of developing the core skills of “object studies”: careful viewing, writing detailed descriptions, setting out and testing research hypotheses, and telling stories through material artifacts. Aimed towards undergraduate students taking courses in material culture as well as postgraduate students embarking on independent research projects these chapter “studies” are practically oriented and demonstrate research projects that can be undertaken either in a course or even through personal study. Chapters in Object Studies conclude with research questions, suggestions on methodology, and a discursive bibliography designed to help students pursue their own projects based on these examples.

Chapter 1: Personal Objects.- Chapter 2: Objects and Local History.- Chapter 3: A History of the World in Coffee Cups.- Chapter 4: Collecting Things: The Psychology of Accumulation, from Museums to Hoarders.- Chapter 5: The Things We Read.- Chapter 6: Consuming Objects.- Chapter 7: Thinking with Things.

Cyrus Mulready is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he teaches courses on book history, material culture, Shakespeare, and early British literature. He has published on Shakespeare, book history, and pedagogy, and was the 2017 recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.