Week 2: Methodology and Material Culture
This week, I met with Professor Turdean to discuss methodology. She shared with me three articles that she assigns to students in her HISP 320: Material Culture course. Since I have not yet taken the course myself, I wanted to start my research project with an understanding of what exactly I was trying to do and how I was going to do it. By far the most helpful piece was Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture by Jules David Prown. I found it delightfully dense, and it took me hours to get through his twenty-page article in the Winterthur Portfolio. Prown discussed the “what,” “why,” and “how” of material culture, and provided the structural framing for a material culture study.
Also on my reading list were articles by Leslie Shannon Miller and Rebecca E. Bush, titled The Many Figures of Eve: Styles of Womanhood Embodied in a Late-Nineteenth Century Corset and A Dazzling, Unusual Bit of Cloth The Origins, Travels, and Homecoming of the Lovelace Coverlet of Troup County, Georgia respectively. Both provided fascinating, challenging looks at seemingly plain and single-faceted objects. They helped me expand my thinking in regards to what we can learn from objects and demonstrated the power of Prown’s methodology when we study beyond the object, into the minds of the people who made and used it.
