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The of Art & Material Anth 6591 Instructor: Dr. Joshua A. Bell : Thursday 6.10 – 8 pm Location: Cooper Room, National of Natural (NMNH) 10th and Constitution Avenue Instructor Email: [email protected] Phone: 202.633.1935 Office Location: NMNH Rm 318 Office Hours: Thursday 2-4pm or by appointment

Art and – things that we make, use, discard, admire, hate and struggle to understand – have long been topics of anthropological scrutiny. This course will survey anthropological of art and material culture with a global cross-cultural focus. Participants will examine, and become conversant, in numerous disciplinary approaches—functional, symbolic/semiotic/structuralist, aesthetic, economic, historical, and political—to the study of objects. Doing so students will think through ways of bringing these theories into a dialogue with one another, and how they do and do not articulate with indigenous perspectives. Following a discussion of early anthropological theories of decorative art, exchange and , the course will focus on contemporary approaches framed around such key topics such as agency, art worlds, colonial , cultural biography, iconoclasm, materiality, primitive art, objectification, regimes of , repatriation, and tourist art. The course will prepare students to bring a wide array of theoretical and methodological perspectives to the study of things – from to , from mobile phones to clothes, from souvenirs to fine arts – among diverse in the Global North and South. Students will apply the range of approaches examined during the semester to explore a single object or discrete of objects as a way to test the theories in practice. Materials in temporary and permanent displays at the Smithsonian will be central to the course.

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Assignments 1. Class Participation and Attendance – 15% Students will participate in each seminar discussion. This means speaking in class, saying reasonably well thought- out things that demonstrate that you have done the assigned readings. Non- participation will result in a lower final grade in the course. If you have difficultly speaking in a group setting, I recommend writing three questions before the seminar to then ask.

2. Leading Seminar Discussion, Critical & Questions – 25% Each student will work in pairs to lead a seminar discussion. This does not mean that you will summarize the readings for the seminar, rather working together you will prepare a set of discussion questions that will be the basis for the seminar discussion. These questions are to be e-mailed to the entire seminar no later than 9 am on the day of seminar. Please feel free to involve us looking at something in NMNH as part of the seminar, bring hand-outs and or a power-point to help lead the discussion. I encourage you to be creative and critical.

3. Paper – 60% Each of you will do a research paper on a topic of your choice within the broad remit of art and material culture. This can be anything from a particular object (bicycle, iPhone 5, a Rothko painting, pole, the giant squid, Washington monument), an exhibit (Earth Matters, NMAA; Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, NMAI, etc.) or a wider phenomenon (instagram, book , DYI shows, the of twerking, etc.). I am happy to work with you to select a topic. Having chosen a topic, using the readings for the seminar, as well as other sources, you will research and write a paper that explores the various aspects this thing along one or more of the theoretical lines we have explored.

These papers must be between 25- 30 pages (1.5 spacing and without bibliography included). On October 24 at the beginning of class an outline of the final paper is due. This outline will provide in two pages of text a sketch of the aim, scope, and method of your intended paper and include a working bibliography of relevant sources. While you can draw on materials from this syllabus, I expect that you will have done research as to what exists on the given topic. This is worth 15% of your final grade on the paper. No late outlines will be accepted. To have a successful paper I strongly advise you meeting with me to discuss your project as the semester unfolds.

For our final seminar (December 5) each member will give a short (7-10 minute) presentation of their paper. While I don’t expect your paper to be finished at this point, I do expect a coherent and well-argued presentation. These presentations are designed to create a forum for group feedback about your topic, which will improve your papers. Due to the number of people I expect us to run over during this session, please be prepared to stay a bit longer then the two hours.

The final paper is due on December 19 (before 12 midnight).

General guidelines for written assignments: Please submit assignments on time. Late work will not be accepted. All written assignments should be typed in standard fonts (12 point , Palatino, or Courier are recommended) with 1-inch margins. Please staple & paginate papers and put your name on each page. Please follow the citation/bibliographic format used in .

I strongly advise you to read Orwell’s 1946 essay "Politics and the English ” before you begin this and the other written assignment. Good writing takes time and thought: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 2

4. Attendance to this seminar is mandatory and absences must be accompanied with a valid excuse (e.g. death in the , documented illness, natural disaster).

Other Email Policy: Email is a necessary evil, but it creates a false sense of social relations and allows us to become increasingly alienated from our colleagues and students. Please make every effort to call me or come by my office hours if you have questions about this class, and its assignments.

Required texts are available for purchase at GWU bookstore and will be made available in the GWU library. Assigned articles and chapters will be available via e-mail as PDFs on blackboard. The readings are divided between required and further reading. Further readings are intended to help provide further for the assigned reading, and should be read by those of you leading a seminar discussion.

• Larkin, B. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and in Nigeria. Durham: Duke University Press. • Myers, F. R. 2002. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press. • Keane, W. 1997. Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian . Berkeley: University of California Press. • Geismar, H. 2013. Treasured Possessions: Indigenous Interventions into Cultural and Intellectual . Durham: Duke University Press. • Field, L. 2008. Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of California Indian Sovereignty and Identity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Expectations: I expect you to come to the seminar having done the readings and ready to actively discuss the topics at hand.

Week 1 (Aug. 29) Orientations During this initial meeting we will discuss the syllabus and seminar’s goals.

Week 2 (Sept. 5) Object Lessons – Artifacts, Primitive Art and Within this seminar we will consider some aspects of the origins of objects – regardless of their classification – in the formation of the discipline of anthropology during the “Museum Period.” Doing so we will consider the of art in the formation of , the place of collecting and the world of museums.

• Boas, F. 1955. Primitive Art. New York: Dover. In H.Morphy and M. Perkins, eds. 2006 The Anthropology of Art: A Reader. Blackwell. Pp. 39-55. • Jenkins, D. 1994. “Object lessons and ethnographic displays: museum exhibitions and the making of American anthropology.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32(2): 242-270. • Gordon, R. J., A. Brown, and J. A. Bell. 2013. "Expeditions, Their Films and : An Introduction," in Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and . Edited by J. A. Bell, A. Brown, and R. J. Gordon, pp. 1-30. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Scholarly Press. • Clifford, J. 1988. "'On Collecting Art and Culture." in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century , , and Art, pp. 215-254. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 3 Further Reading: • Pitt Rivers, A. H. 1883. “On the Egyptian boomerang and its affinities.” Journal of the Anthropological Institute 12:454-463. • Haddon, A. C. 1895. in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-Histories of . London: Walter Scott, LTD. Pp. 1-10; 306-318. • Isaac, G and Bell, J.A. In Press “Smithsonian Contributions to Social and .” In in , J. McGee, et. al. (eds). Sage.

Week 3 (Sept. 12) , Infrastructure and Media This week we will read Larkin’s book Signal and Noise as a way to think through the effects of colonialism, as well as the role of infrastructure and media.

• Larkin, B. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham: Duke University Press.

Further Reading • Benjamin, W. 1936. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” (www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm) • Foucault, M. 1984 [1967]. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité. 1-6. • Edwards, E., and J. Hart. 2004. “Introduction: Photographs as Objects.” In Edwards, E., and J. Hart. eds. Photographs objects histories: on the materiality of images, pp. 1-15. London: Routledge.

Week 4 (Sept. 19) Making Things – Techniques, and Technology Within this seminar we look at anthropological understandings of the making of things, and its effect on the makers. Moving from Mauss’ notion of techniques, we will examine the role of technology and consider how discursive and non-discursive knowledge come together in acts of making.

As part of this seminar – please make sure to visit the exhibit Mud Masons of Mali (http://www.si.edu/Exhibitions/Details/Mud-Masons-of-Mali-4823) - it is located in the African Voices Focus Gallery on the first floor.

• Mauss, M. 1935 “Techniques of the Body.” In Schlanger, N. 2006. : Techniques, Technology and , pp. 77-96. Oxford: Berghan. • Ingold, T. 2000. The of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Pp. 294-348. o “Tools, and machines: An excursion in the of technology.” o “Society, nature and the concept of technology.” o “On Weaving a Basket.” • Gell, Alfred. 1988. “Technology and .” Anthropology Today 4(2): 6-9. • Coupaye, L. 2009. "Ways of Enchanting: Chaînes Opératoires and Yam Cultivation in Nyamikum Village, Maprik, Papua ." Journal of Material Culture 14:433-458. • Marchand, T.H.J. 2009. “Negotiating License and Limits: expertise and in Djenne's building trade.” 79 (1): 71-91.

Further Reading • Munn, N. D. 1977. 'The spatiotemporal transformations of Gawa canoes.' Journal de la Société des Océanistes 33:39-51.

The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 4 • Martinón-Torres, Marcos. 2002. “Chaîne opératoire: the concept and its applications within the study of technology”. Gallaecia 21: 29–43.

Week 5 (Sept. 26) Making Memories –Temporality, Histories and Materiality Examining different registers and scales (, houses and landscapes), within this seminar we will look at the role of things in making memories, and thus their role in framing temporality and history through their materiality.

• Bourdieu, P. 1977. “Structures and the Habitus.” In Outline of a Theory of Practice, pp. 72- 95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Connerton, P. 1989. “Social Memory.” How Remember, pp. 1-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Parkin, D. 1999. “Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Displacement.” Journal of Material Culture 4:303-320. • Dudley, S. 2011. “Feeling at home: Producing and consuming things in Karenni refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border.” , Space and Place 17:742-755. • Morton, C. 2007. Remembering the House: Memory and Materiality in Northern Botswana. Journal of Material Culture 12:157-179 • Gordillo, G. 2011. "Ships Stranded in the Forest: Debris of on a Phantom River." Current Anthropology 52:141-167.

Further Reading • Bourdieu, P. 1970. “The Berber house or the world reversed.” Social Information 9: 151-170. • Stoller, P. 1994. Embodying Colonial Memories. American 3:634 – 648. • Miller, D. 1987. “The Humility of Objects.” Material Culture and Mass , pp. 85-108. London: Blackwell.

Week 6 (Oct. 3) Making Value – The Fetish, Commodities and Subjects Within this seminar we will look at the blurring of objects and subjects as things are used, admired and hated and as they circulate through different regimes of value. To do so we will examine the fetish both as an analytic and methodological category, and the idea that things like people have biographies.

• Pietz, W. 1985. “The Problem of the Fetish.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 9:5- 17. • Kopytoff, I. 1986. 'The cultural biography of things: as process.' In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by A. Appadurai, pp. 64-94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Colloredo-Mansfeld, R. 2003. 'Introduction: Matter Unbound.'. Journal of Material Culture 8:245-254. • Weiner, A. B. 1994. ‘Cultural and the Density of Objects.’ American Ethnologist 21:391-403. • Bell, J.A, Kuipers, J., Hazen, J., Kemble, A. and B. Kobak nd. "We're almost like therapists for people with electronics": Fetishization, Cell Phones and Repair.” Paper presented at symposium Linguistic And Material Intimacies Of Mobile Phones (June 10, 2013).

Further Reading

The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 5 • Marx, K. 1867 ‘The of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.’ In Capital. Volume 1. Chapter 1, Section 4. (Available online http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4) • Appadurai, Arjun (1986) ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value.’ In (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives. pp. 3-63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Pietz, W. 1987. “The Problem of the Fetish, II: The Origin of the Fetish.” 13: 23-45.

Week 7 (Oct. 10) Art Markets – Artists, Circulation, and Identities Using Myer’s examination of the art markets around Pintupi paintings as a case study, this week we will look at artists, their paintings, and how their international circulation has transformed (and not) their value and their accompanying identities.

• Myers, F. R. 2002. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press.

Further Reading • Clifford, J. 1988. "Histories of the Tribal and Modern." in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, pp. 189-214. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Week 8 (Oct. 18) , Performance and Representation Turning to Keane’s ethnography of Anakalang communities in Sumba, we will look at the intersection of words and things in the making of meaningful worlds. Doing so we will consider the role of semiotic analysis of materiality.

• Keane, W. 1997. Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Further Reading • Levi-Strauss, C. 1962. “The Science of the Concrete.” The Savage , pp. 1-22. Chicago: University of Chicago. • Keane, W. 2003. 'Semiotics and the social analysis of material things.' Language and Communication 23:409-25.

Week 9 (Oct. 24) Aesthetics, Style and the Senses In this seminar we will consider aesthetics as a field in which style is made, the senses affected and life unfolds in different cultural settings and through a variety of different registers (cattle herding, warfare, dance, landscape and food).

• Coote, J. 1992. “ Marvels of Everyday Vision…“ in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Edited by J. Coote and A. Shelton, pp. 245-274. Oxford: Clarendon Press • O'Hanlon, M. 1995. “Modernity and the ‘Graphicalization’ of Meaning: New Guinea Highland Shield in Historical Perspective.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S.: 469-493. • Murphy, W.P 1998. “The Sublime Dance of Mende Politics: An African Aesthetic of Charismatic Power.” American Ethnologist 25(4): 563-582. • Feld, S. 1996. "Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea." in Senses of place. Edited by S. Feld and K. H. Basso, pp. 91-135. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press.

The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 6 • Jonatis, A. 2006. “Smoked Fish and Fermented Oil: Taste and Smell among the Kwakwaka’wakw.” E. Edwards, C. Gosden, and R. B. Phillips, pp. 141-167. New York: Berg.

Further Reading • Howes, D. 2006. “Scent, Sound and Synaesthesia.” In Handbook of Material Culture. Edited by Chris Tilley et. al., pp. 160-172. London: Sage Publications. • Conkey, M. 2006. “Design, Style and Function.” In Handbook of Material Culture. Edited by Chris Tilley et. al., pp. 355-372. London: Sage Publications.

**** Research Paper Outlines Due****

Week 10 (Oct. 31) The Agency of Things A core aspect of the material (re)turn in anthropology has involved debates about the agency of things.

• Gell, Alfred. 1992. “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology”. In Anthropology Art and Aesthetics. Edited by Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 40-63. • Gell, A. 1999. "'Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps.’ " in The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. Edited by E. Hirsch, pp. 187-214. London: The Athlone Press. • Morphy, H. 2009. 'Art as a Mode of Action.' Journal of Material Culture 14:5-27. • Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 43-86. • Latour, B. 1999. “A of Human and Nonhumans: Following Daedalus’s Labyrinth.” In Pandora's hope: essays on the of . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pp. 174-215. • Strathern, M. 1996. 'Cutting the Network.' The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2:517-535. • Ingold, T. 2007. 'Materials against materiality' Archaeological Dialogues 14:1-16.

Further Reading • Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chapters 1-5, pp. 1-72. • Mitchell, W. 2004. “What Do Images Want?” Chicago: University of Chicago. • Harrison, R. 2013. “Reassembling Ethnographic Museum Collections.” In Reassembling the : Indigenous Agency and Ethnographic Collections. Edited by Harrison, R., A. Clark, and S. Byrne, 3-38. Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research.

Week 11 (Nov. 7) , Heritage and Copyright Focusing on Geismar’s book Treasured Possessions we will look at the cross-cultural issues around ownership of cultural property and heritage.

• Geismar, H. 2013. Treasured Possessions: Indigenous Interventions into Cultural and Intellectual Property. Durham: Duke University Press.

Further Reading • Bell, J.A., Christen, K. and M. Turin In Press. ‘Introduction to Digital Return and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge.’ In Special Issue of

The Anthropology of Art & Material Culture (Bell) 7 Review, J.A. Bell, K. Christen and M. Turn (eds). • Tapsell, P. 1997. "The Flight of Pareraututu: an investigation of Taonga from a tribal perspective." Journal of Society 106:323-74.

Week 12 (Nov. 14) Collaborative Turn Within this seminar we will examine the ways in which collaborative work with indigenous communities is opening up conceptions of things more widely and challenging practices and scholarly assumptions, while resulting in more innovative histories and theories.

• Field, L. 2008. Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of California Indian Sovereignty and Identity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Further Reading • Thomas, N. 2010. "The Museum as Method". Museum Anthropology 33:6–10. • Bell, J.A., In Press ‘The Veracity of Form: Transforming Knowledges, their Archival Traces and Mediation in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea’ in R. Silverman (ed) Translating Knowledge. London: Routledge.

Week 13 (Nov. 21) American Anthropology Association – No Seminar

Week 14 (Nov. 28) Thanksgiving – No Seminar

Week 15 (Dec. 5) FINAL PRESENTATIONS (Make up for week 13)

Week 17 (Dec. 19) Final Papers Due

Top register – (1) Sign at Highway rest stop, New Jersey Turnpike, 2008; (2) Youth being painted with ochre in preparation for a sing-sing presentation to tourists in Asaro village, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea, 2011; (3) Ivory Benin from 16th century said to represent Idia, the mother of Oba Esigie, and worn by Oba on the hip. The top of the mask is decorated with heads representing Portuguese, who were a major ally of the Benin in the 16th century. Displayed in the and collected in 1910 by Sir Ralph Moor and purchased from C.G. Seligman; (4) Water color of a Nokia flip phone by Alexis Demetriades, 2012; (5) Close-up of a man’s forehead ornament decorated with Nassau shell, and beads collected by Dr. W.L. Abbot in 1914 on Wakde island, Dutch New Guinea and donated to NMNH.

Bottom Register – (1) Thomas Bell looking at 1881 painting Le déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and displayed in The Phillips Collection 2010; (2) Close-up of Torqued Ellipse IV made by Richard Serra in 1998 and displayed in The Museum of Modern, 2007; (3) Photographic plate featuring William Edwards and acquired by him as a souvenir while in Taiwain in 1975; (4) Italian crypt containing the remains of James Smithson erected in the Smithsonian Castle in 1905, 2012; (5) View of a turbine building at the Bonneville Dam (1938) on the Columba River, Oregon, 2012. All photographs by J.A. Bell.

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