Thing Theory

Anthropology GR6085x THING THEORY. The ‘material turn’ is a shorthand for the vast and messy literature on things/objects/materials/ stuff/matter that crosses between and interweaves anthropology, archaeology, art history, science & technology studies (STS), political science, philosophy, and literary studies. Material cultural studies, of varying sorts, ask how things make us. This course explores the turn towards things across the humanities and social sciences over the past few decades. Engaging with the material of worlds, scholars have generated new questions, new modes of analysis, and new accounts of subjectivity, agency, and being. We will read a variety of texts from anthropology, STS, and other disciplines, in order to trace some of the ways in which material objects have become important to scholars in the humanities and social sciences.