Below you’ll find a list of the latest graduate course offerings at UD that engage significantly with material culture. Don’t forget to also check out the amazing grant opportunities sponsored by CMCS.
SPRING 2025 COURSES
ENGL – Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Multispecies Reading and Writing
Professor Yates
The course will bring together work in overlapping but sometimes disparate fields
of study to ask what focusing on the co-making of different animals (human and otherwise),
plants, and minerals enables us to think, read, write, and do? How do multispecies relations
manifest in and shape our archives / infrastructures? How do they mark our stories, media, and
inform what we broadly call “writing”?
UAPP630 – Methods in Historic Preservation
Professor Morrissey
Introduces students to the critical skills and methodologies employed in the field of historic preservation. Organization is based on the steps used in preservation planning, including survey and identification of historic resources, evaluation of significance, development of historic context, and creation of preservation treatment alternatives.
UAPP618/MCST618 – Traditional Architectural Materials.
Professor Reedy
Overview of composition, fabrication methods, deterioration mechanisms, and preservation needs of stone, ceramic, metal, glass, mortar, plaster, paint, and wood components of traditional architecture from a variety of cultural contexts.
ARTH 619 – Collecting New Worlds
Professor Domínguez Torres
This seminar examines the incorporation of non-European materials, artifacts, and
images (mainly those coming from the Americas) into early modern European artistic
representations and collections. It discusses images of foreign lands and peoples, as
well as the integration of exotic artifacts and materials into early modern collections, and
the implications of such assimilations in the cultural dynamics of the period.
ARTH 635 – Sensing Art and Design
Professor Van Horn
This seminar investigates sensory perception in the material and visual cultures of vast
early America. How did sound, smell, and touch shape making, use, gender, race and
cross-cultural encounters?
EAMC 601 – Introduction to Decorative Arts in America to 1860
Professors Brüeckner, Killian, and Dann Roeber
Development of decorative arts, painting and architecture in America. Principles of
connoisseurship and studies of American and imported objects of art. Collections of the
Winterthur Museum.
EAMC602 – Material Life in America
Professor Brüeckner
American domestic environments and decorative arts within social and economic
contexts of 17th and 18th centuries. Critically assesses how objects contribute to the
study of everyday life in colonial America.
MSST 600 – Introduction to Museums and Public Engagement
Professor Harting
Introduction to the history of museums and examines selected current issues in
museum professional practice. Content may offer discussion of issues in collecting and
exhibition practice, education and audience development, evolving professional ethics,
and museum governance.
UAPP 629 – Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
Professor Reedy
Analysis of the theory underlying historic preservation in the United States and globally,
including its history and evolution over time. Examines the impact of preservation laws
and public policies, and the strategies and regulations for identifying significant
structures, sites, and cultural heritage worthy of preservation.
SPRING 2024 COURSES
MCST / ENGL / HIST / ARTH / EAMC 610 — Introduction to Theories of Material Culture Studies
Professor Cobb & Professor Thomas
This seminar introduces graduate students to the theories, practices and methodologies of “material culture studies.” As the investigation of anything that is made or modified by humans, material culture studies assumes that every object can reveal complex stories about past and present people and societies. We therefore study “things” broadly defined, such as household goods, machinery, built structures, art, landscapes, clothing, food and living bodies, as well as processes of production and consumption across space and time. These objects may be actual artifacts or representations—linguistic and visual, as well as material. At the same time, we examine things as material expressions of values, social relationships, political ideologies, economic conditions and cultural change over time. This seminar explores the fundamental principles and theories that have come to inform such investigations; they include (but are not limited to): material concepts; theories of production and consumption; modes of object analysis; methodologies and their application; objects in word and image; gendered objects; technology and manufactured things; lived and built environments.
ENGL / EAMC 606 — Issues in American Material Culture: OBJECTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Professor Brueckner
This seminar explores how objects and material culture shaped form, function, and meaning in American literature between 1700 and 1900. Using interdisciplinary approaches that examine literature in relation to material culture, early capitalism, art history, and anthropology, seminar meetings will explore how objects registered, circulated, and signified in different literary genres. Topics to be discussed are philosophies and the representation of materiality; print culture, consumer revolution(s) and the rise of capitalism; property, performance, and self-representation; race, gender, and objectification; the agency of “literary things” and strategies of accumulation, alienation, and fetishization. Secondary readings will tap theory, history, and critical case studies. Primary sources include biographies, travel narratives, novels, short stories, and plays.
EAMC 607 — British Design History, 1530-1930
Professor Dann Roeber & Professor Brueckner
Examines influence of British Design History on global culture, beginning with destruction of the monasteries and continuing to the beginning of the Great Depression. During this era, Britain became a world power. It made lasting contributions to architecture, art, landscape design, decorative arts, industrialization, and world navigation that were disseminated through exports, emigrating craftsmen, and design books. Course begins at Winterthur Museum and includes two weeks of field-based learning in Great Britain. RESTRICTIONS: Requires permission of instructor.
EAMC 609 — Craftsmanship in America
Professor Dann Roeber
The course examines how the world of artisans and craftspeople evolved from the era of colonial British America to the 20th century. The course merges elements of art, business, labor, social and technological history and a close study of materials. Students will be working in the collections of the Winterthur Museum throughout the course, wherever possible with original objects and documents. Students will also be learning by doing in order to better understand the embodied dimensions of skill.
EAMC 672 — Connoisseurship of the Decorative Arts in America II
Professor Parmer, Professor Lane, Professor Grigsby, & Professor Johnson
Three subject areas within the decorative arts, each presented by a specialist on the Winterthur Museum staff. Emphasis on close analytical examination of objects stressing identification and evaluation. RESTRICTIONS: Requires permission of instructor.
EAMC 673 — Connoisseurship of the Decorative Arts in America III
Professor Lane & Professor Johnson
One or two subject areas within the decorative arts in which students work closely with a specialist on the Winterthur faculty. Emphasis on close analytical examination of objects stressing identification and evaluation. RESTRICTIONS: Requires permission of instructor.
PREVIOUSLY OFFERED COURSES
MCST / ENGL / HIST / ARTH / EAMC 610 — Introduction to Theories of Material Culture Studies (Spring 2022)
Professor Yates & Professor Winn
MCST / ENGL / HIST / ARTH / EAMC 610 — Introduction to Theories of Material Culture (Spring 2021)
Professors Brückner & Van Horn
AFRA 642 — The Black Portrait (Spring 2021)
Professor Barber
AFRA 647 / MSST 647 — Curating Hidden Collections & the Black Archive (Spring 2021)
Professor McGee
ARTH 627 — Documentary, Photography, and Truth (Spring 2021)
Professor Hill
EAMC 615 — Exhibition and Interpretation of Material Culture (Spring 2021)
Professor Dann Roeber
MSST 601 — Curatorship and Collections Management (Spring 2021)
Professor Cohen
UAPP 627 — World Heritage Sites (Spring 2021)
Professor Reedy
UAPP 630 — Methods in Historic Preservation (Spring 2021)
Professor Morrissey
UAPP 636 — Preservation in Practice (Spring 2021)
Professors Reedy, Morrissey, & Emmons
ENGL / HIST / MSST / MCST 647 — Archives Theory: From Manuscripts to Metaphors (Fall 2020)
Professor Helton
ANTH / MSST 663 — Historical Archaeology and the Public (Fall 2020)
Professor DeCunzo
UAPP 629 — Historic Preservation Theory and Practice (Fall 2020)
Professors Morrissey & Reedy
MCST / ENGL / HIST / ARTH / EAMC 610 — Introduction to Theories of Material Culture Studies (Spring 2020)
Professors Wasserman & Anishanslin
EAMC 609 — Pre-Industrial Craftsmanship (Spring 2020)
Professor Mohun
EAMC 667-012 — Introduction to Public & Digital Humanities (Spring 2020)
Professor Guiler
EAMC 667-015 — Exhibition and Interpretation of Material Culture (Spring 2020)
Professor Roeber
UAPP 627-194 — World Heritage Sites (Spring 2020)
Professor Reedy
UAPP 630-010 — Methods in Historic Preservation (Spring 2020)
Professor Morrissey
Honors E110 — Prized Possessions: Collections and Identity (Spring 2019)
Professor Wasserman
ENGL 874 — The Power of Objects in Early American Literature, 1700-1900 (Spring 2019)
Professor Brückner
GEOG 630 — Food Geographies and Food Justice (Spring 2019)
Professor Naylor
ARTH 667 — Diplomatic Things: Art & Architecture in Global Contexts (Fall 2018)
Professors Okoye & Horton
ENGL / HIST / ARTH 667 — The Black Atlantic and the Archive (Fall 2018)
Professor Helton
ENGL 684 — Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall 2018)
Professor Wasserman
ARTH 617 — Invention in the Age of Vermeer
Professor Chapman
ARTH 635-010 — Material and Visual Culture of Slavery
Professor Van Horn
ARTH 667 — Eurasia and the Problems of Style
Professor Rujivacharakul
ARTH 667 — The Orient and its Representation
Professor Rujivacharakul
EAMC 601 — Introduction to Decorative Arts (Summer Institute)
Professor Guiler
EAMC 602 — Material Life in America
Professor Roeber
EAMC 606 — Cities on a Hill: Material Culture in America’s Communal Utopias
Professor Guiler
EAMC 667-011 — The City in Material Culture
Professor Roeber
ENGL 639 — Material Losses: Psychoanalysis and Material Culture in the Contemporary American Novel
Professor Wasserman
HIST 605 — Historiography of Material Culture
Professor Grier
MSST 610 — Exhibitions
Professor Ott
MSST / BAMS 667 — Curating Hidden Collections & the Black Archive
Professor McGee
UAPP 631 — Documentation of Historic Structures
Professor Morrissey