Lecture (LEC)

• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inq
• COLL INTENSIVE WRITING SECTION

• Above class meets with ANTH-E 400.
• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
• Above class COLL Intensive Writing section

Topic: Craft and its study

Does the word craft refer to a class of objects that one might make, give, buy, sell or use--jewelry or ceramics or weavings, for instance? Does the word refer to techniques that can be put to use in the making of either practical or expressive things--weaving fibers, carving wood, or stacking bricks, for example. How is it that, in some societies and in some times, craft has taken on so many different emotional and ideological associations? Why would certain kinds of objects (baskets, for example) or techniques (such as masonry) be deemed contemptible or esteemed? If craft is a fraught category in Europe and in the settler societies of North America, is craft's vexing status characteristic of other times and places? Is the concept of craft even present in the context of making and material culture in other societies? Is it useful as an analytical or organizational concept? How have industrial and digital technologies reshaped people's relationships to things made by hand and to the concept of craft? Craft raises many such questions. Together we will try to answer some of them. In an integrative fashion, this course draws together two purposes of special concern to emerging students-scholars-practitioners in folklore studies and anthropology. The course provides students in these fields with an opportunity to explore, or to explore more deeply, the study of material culture, with a special focus on the topic of craft. We will seek to answer the questions that craft evokes by working as a research team, sometimes studying craft collectively and sometimes independently out in the world. In addition to engaging with the study of material culture, the course¿s other purpose is to provide a framework for students to pursue, in a capstone-like way, substantive, independent research projects that will be developed incrementally and iteratively using the frameworks of the College of Arts and Sciences' Intensive Writing (IW) requirement. Student research will result in a substantive final paper and an associated public oral presentation. Research will focus ethnographically on contemporary practices of making studied through fieldwork and the careful consideration of online media. Material culture, including craft(ed) objects can be studied in the museum too, but this semester we will study craft in the world--in workshops, in markets, in homes and workplaces, and online.