Below you’ll find a list of the past 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.
Recently Offered Courses
Spring 2026
ARTH 619 – Studies in Art of the Iberian World, 1400-1800
Professor Mónica Domínguez Torres
RELIGION AND MATERIALITY IN THE IBERIAN WORLD. Explores religious manifestations in diverse regions of the Spanish and Portuguese empires paying particular attention to the materials employed in their production; not only the techniques and properties associated with each material choice, but also the ways in which such substances were sourced and traded. Open to graduate students only; requires permission from the instructor.
UAPP430/630, Methods in Historic Preservation
Professor Catherine 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. The UAPP630 section meets a requirement for the graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation.
ARTC 667 – Preventive Conservation Research and Applications
Professor Joelle Wickens
This course takes clothing as a starting point for examining broad themes in anthropology, including gender and sexuality, race and the body, history and colonialism. We look at the ritual significance of clothing and the role of style in constituting social movements and identity categories. We also examine the globalization of the fashion industry to understand the relationships among citizenship, consumption, labor, and power.
MCST/ENGL/HIST/ARTH/EAMC 610 – Introduction to Theories of Material Culture Studies
Professor Arwen Mohun
This seminar introduces graduate students to the theories, practices and methodologies
of “material culture studies” broadly defined. The course is designed to help students
both gain a better understand their own discipline and acquire a new set of tools and
perspectives. Our method will be both eclectic and interdisciplinary. Through discussion
of weekly readings, site visits, and “object lessons,” we will explore how scholars and
practitioners from a wide range of disciplines have utilized both theory and empirical
research methods to understand objects in relation to their social and cultural contexts.
Topics covered will include how and why different fields name and define the object of
study; different approaches to human and object agency; and research methods across
different disciplines.
MSPE 402/602 – Archives and Paper Collections
Professor Laura Helton
This course serves as an introduction to theories and best practices in the curation and management of archives and paper collections in museums, archives, and other collecting institutions. Students learn core archival terms and debates—around appraisal, provenance, and custodianship—while getting hands-on experience arranging and describing manuscript materials through a partnership with UD’s Special Collections department in Morris Library. Students also explore legal and ethical issues concerning archives (copyright, privacy, reparative language, and cultural heritage), and the complex relationship between paper-based and born-digital records.
(Fall 2025)
UAPP429 – Historic Preservation Theory and Practice
Professor Fesak
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.
*Course counts towards the graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation.
UAPP454 – Architecture of Everyday Life
Professor Morrissey
Understanding and interpreting everyday buildings and landscapes by seeing the built environment through a physical lens (material, construction, style and plan) and social lens (gender, class, race) and from the perspective of multiple disciplines.
*Course counts towards the graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation.
ENGL/HIST/MSST/MCST 674 – Archive Theory
Professor Helton
Colonial archives, curio cabinets, scrapbooks, databases: once understood primarily as sources, archival objects are now subjects of inquiry in their own right. In this course we will trace the “archival turn” in the humanities while immersing ourselves in collections. Through readings in theory and practice, we will consider how interpretations of the archive in one field reframe archival questions in another. We will ask: How do archives shape our inquiries and imaginaries? What gets saved or lost, and why? What are the ethics and constraints of archival research? How can we work both along and against the archival grain? This cross-disciplinary seminar is for graduate students engaged in traditional research projects as well as those interested in public humanities and museum work. Each student will design an individual project tailored to their scholarly interests and career goals, as well as contribute to a collaborative digital humanities project in African diasporic history.
ARTH613 – Studies in Renaissance Art & Architecture: European Art & Science
Professor Nelson
The turn in early modern studies toward connecting artisanal/making and scientific/knowing practices on a global scale has crucial repercussions for the entire field of art history. After collectively processing canonical case studies in, e.g., alchemy and the occult, anatomy and medicine, military technology and automata, astronomy and astrology, cartography and geography, and the afterlife of medieval encyclopedias like bestiaries and herbaria, participants will contribute new scholarship on themes related to visual knowledge during the (often globally extractive) “birth” of science in Europe.
ARTH6120 – Seminar in African Art: Sacrifice, Enchantment & Power
Professor Okoye
The seminar will on one hand explore African art, its forms, its material, its ritual or performative insertion or activation, as procedures of knowledge production. On the other hand, it will explore the collection and exhibition histories of its diverse arts from the 17th century onwards, pointing to the challenges and difficulties presented by the historical invention of the exhibition and the museum via an epistemological lineage we increasingly understand as particular–culturally laden attempts at understanding that sought after the ways that modern publics (later, including those in Africa) could understand the relevance this art has to things like an emerging anthropocenic imagination–about which it cautioned or forewarned. We will do so while occasionally viewing selected objects in UD Museum’s African art collection, and perhaps those nearby.
ARTH635 – American Art to 1900: Disability and American Art Histories
Professor Van Horn
This seminar investigates the intersections of disability studies with “American” art, architecture, design, material and visual cultures. How do histories of US art change when ableism is challenged? Where does disability surface and where do absences persist? What new ways of making or experiencing art are included when we consider disability? How can art history, museums, and public digital history contribute to anti-ableist future practices? We will approach disability intersectionally and with attention to the histories of understudied peoples. Our seminar will meet often at Winterthur Museum. Students will have a chance to interact with Winterthur’s collections and to share research through a public-facing format.
HIST603 – Historiography of Technology
Professor Mohun
Introduces major historiographic issues and examines the development of this subfield of history.
(Spring 2024)
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