Cultural Histories of the Material World (The Bard Graduate Center Cultural Histories of the Material World)

A collection of essays from leading figures in numerous fields exploring the ways human beings have perceived, shaped, and interpreted the material world| All across the humanities fields there is a new interest in materials and materiality. This is the first book to capture and study the "material turn" in the humanities from all its varied perspectives. Cultural Histories of the Material World brings together top scholars from all these different fields—from Art History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Folklore, History, History of Science, Literature, Philosophy—to offer their vision of what cultural history of the material world looks like and attempt to show how attention to materiality can contribute to a more precise historical understanding of specific times, places, ways, and means. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of future possibilities and new perspectives. Cover Title page Copyright page Contents Introduction: The Culture of the Hand – Peter N. Miller Part 1. Art’s Challenge Chapter One – Design History and the Decorative Arts – Glenn Adamson Chapter Two – The Materiality of Art – Philippe Bordes Part 2. The Place of the Material Chapter Three – Mutually Contextual: Materials, Bodies, and Objects – Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak Chapter Four – Museum Display, an Algonquian Bow, and the Ship of Theseus – Ivan Gaskell Chapter Five – Cultural Histories of the Material World: Whose Material World? – Sabine MacCormack Chapter Six – The History of Facebook – Daniel Miller Chapter Seven – Dirty, Pretty Things: On Archaeology and Prehistoric Materialities – Lynn Meskell Chapter Eight – Archaeology and Design History: A Thesis and Nine Theses – Michael Shanks Part 3. Experience and Material Chapter Nine – Swelling Toads, Translation, and the Paradox of the Concrete – Bernard L. Herman Chapter Ten – Materiality and Cultural Translation: Indigenous Arts, Colonial Exchange, and Postcolonial Perspectives – Ruth B. Phillips Chapter Eleven – The Antiquarian, the Collector, and the Cultural History of the Material World – Alain Schnapp Chapter Twelve – Mountain as Material: Landscape Inscriptions in China – Robert E. Harrist, Jr. Chapter Thirteen – Objects and History – Jaś Elsner Chapter Fourteen – Beyond Representation: Things—Human and Nonhuman – Ittai Weinryb Chapter Fifteen – Materialities of Culture – Bill Brown Part 4. Future Histories Chapter Sixteen: Toward a Cultural History of the Material World – Juliet Fleming Chapter Seventeen: Thoughts on Cultural Histories of the Material World – Nancy J. Troy Chapter Eighteen – The History of Science as a Cultural History of the Material World – Pamela H. Smith Chapter Nineteen – Reflecting on Recipes – Deborah L. Krohn Chapter Twenty: Music in the Material World: Cultural Traces and Historical Cases – Elaine Sisman Chapter Twenty-One: A Cultural History of the Material World of Islam – Jonathan M. Bloom Twenty-Two - Franz Kugler and the Concept of World Art History – Horst Bredekamp Chapter Twenty-Three – The Missing Link: “Antiquarianism,”“Material Culture,” and “Cultural Science” in the Work of G. F. Klemm – Peter N. Miller Contributors Index All across the humanities fields there is a new interest in materials and materiality. This is the first book to capture and study the "material turn" in the humanities from all its varied perspectives. Cultural Histories of the Material World brings together top scholars from all these different fields--from Art History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Folklore, History, History of Science, Literature, Philosophy--to offer their vision of what cultural history of the material world looks like and attempt to show how attention to materiality can contribute to a more precise historical understanding of specific times, places, ways, and means. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of future possibilities and new perspectives. -- Amazon.com