American material culture

The fourteen essays in this volume provide an important cross section of new research on the current state of American material culture scholarship. From Tupperware to stuffed owls, modern dolls to colonial portraits, the subjects that the authors study demonstrate that things provoke and sustain human dramas.

The essays illustrate the complexity of the field and the ways it is changing; how ethnicity is displayed, creolized, or reinvigorated in border zones of cultural contact; how objects are both mirrors and lenses for gendered constructions; and how differing experiences with the environment alter objects even as objects alter the environment. The authors of this volume consider not only the historic uses of objects but also the continued creation of new meanings with things.