History 254: The Social History of Stuff: Power, Technology, and Meaning in the United States from the Cotton Gin to the Internet

The United States is known as a nation of consumers, of people who fill their lives with lots of “stuff,” and who rely on an extensive technological infrastructure in creating what they think of as a normal lifestyle. But the particular material configurations we aggregate under terms like “stuff” and “infrastructure” have intended (and unintended) uses, users, costs, origins, and histories; they carry associated meanings and embed some set of human relationships. Thinking critically about things demands thinking simultaneously about their social and cultural context, and about the ways people make (and constrain) choices about the material dimensions of their experience. Using historical examples and museum artifacts, this course will explore the relations and techniques of production and consumption; the ways physical objects and social categories like gender, race, and class are intertwined both materially and symbolically; and changing ideas about disposability, convenience, waste, work, and energy.