Jules David Prown

is Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Yale University and the author of John Singleton Copley and American Painting from Its Beginning to the Armory Show. He has taught at Yale for almost forty years, and receiv...

Kenneth Haltman

American Artifacts
Essays in Material Culture

 Edited by

Jules David Prown

Kenneth Haltman

Winner of the 2000 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book Award

When defining culture, one must indeed take into account even the minutest of details. What of a lighter, for example, or a telephone? The essays in this new collection examine just that. The contributors pose not only a historical, pragmatic use for the items, but also delve into more imaginative aspects of what defines us as Americans. Both the lighter and the telephone are investigated, as well as how the lava lamp represents sixties counterculture and containment. The late nineteenth- century corset is discussed as an embodiment of womanhood, and an Amish quilt is used as an illustration of cultural continuity. These are just a few of the artifacts discussed. Scholars will be intrigued by the historical interpretations that contributors proposed concerning a teapot, card table, and locket; students will not only find merit in the expositions, but also by learning from the models how such interpretation can be carried out. This collection helps us understand that very thing that makes us who we are. Viewing these objects from both our past and our present, we can begin to define what it is to be American.

"American Artifacts will serve well as a reader for a course in material culture studies... Informative as well as entertaining." -- Gerald W.R. Ward, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol.126, April 2002, 355-57.

"The essays in American Artifacts display vigorous,... creative historical research to augment intensely focused object study... Delightful, fresh, insightful." -- Gretchen T. Buggeln, Winterthur Portfolio, v.36, September 2002, 245-48.