American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York

FAIN: EH-250960-16

Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)
David Jaffee (Project Director: February 2016 to February 2017)
Catherine L. Whalen (Project Director: February 2017 to March 2017)
Catherine L. Whalen (Project Director: May 2017 to December 2019)
Katherine C. Grier (Co Project Director: February 2017 to March 2018)

A four-week institute for college and university faculty to study American material culture in nineteenth-century New York City.

Bard Graduate Center (BGC) proposes a four-week Summer Institute in July of 2017 for 18 college teachers to study American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York with the goal of bringing this important field into wider use for teaching and research in the humanities. This program will build on our three successful Summer Institutes (2011, 2013, and 2015) where we held an extremely fruitful series of lectures,seminars, sites visits,hands-on tool demonstrations and workshops, independent research, and participant presentations. The 2017 Institute will focus on nineteenth-century artifactual materials with an emphasis on New York City as a national center for fashioning cultural commodities and promoting consumer tastes. Leading practitioners in this interdisciplinary field of study will serve as faculty. Participants will study significant texts in the field of material culture, as well as pursue hands-on work with artifacts in local and regional collections.