ANTH 554H - Materiality & Agency

Credits: Variable

People make things, but do things also make people? How does the material world create our social realities? Can objects have agency? These questions are among those fueling the work of contemporary interested in materiality ? the active and recursive role of materialsanthropologists, art historians, archaeologists and philosophers interested in materiality ? the active and recursive role of materials in shaping social worlds. In this graduate seminar we will grapple with objects and agents, bundling and gathering, art and artifacts, gifts and commodities, subjectivities and meanings. We will read the work of Bruno Latour, Alfred Gell, Tim Ingold, Lynn Meskell, Daniel Miller, Julian Thomas, and Web Keane, among others. The goal of the course is to attain familiarity with and a critical perspective on contemporary theoretical approaches to materiality. Occasional.