Comparative Empires and Material Culture



ARCH 2450, Spring 2008

Comparative Empires and Material Culture



Wednesday, 3:00-5:20 PM

Joukowsky Institute, Rm 203

Instructor: Diana Ng

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

70 Waterman Street

diana_ng@brown.edu

Office hours: Wednesday 10:00 AM-12:00 PM

This seminar investigates the role of material culture in the interactions and relationships between empires and their subjects. In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha argued that from an encounter between an imperialist culture and a colonial culture comes something new, a cultural hybrid, that draws from both sources but stands on its own. This new cultural hybrids engages with, and subverts, the dominant culture, according to Bhabha’s analysis. We will take Bhabha’s concept of cultural hybridity as a starting point in our explorations, asking if hybridity occurs in all imperialist contexts and how this hybridity manifests itself in material culture. We will also challenge the idea of subversion proposed by Bhabha, and investigate other factors related to cultural blending, such as taste, elite emulation, and assimilation for advancement.

In addition, this seminar will also address the question—through a focus on the act of collecting—of the valuation of material culture in an imperialist context. What objects are valued highly by cultures as they come into contact, and why? What ideologies underpin the formation of imperial collections? When these colonial collections and prized possessions are seen through our post-colonial eyes, what is it that we find of value and of interest? How do modern eyes, trained under Western cultural influence, perceive hybrids formed centuries ago?

The explorations of this seminar will be focused on four empires, broadly defined: the Roman, the Chinese, the British, and the American. As we will see, these empires—their narratives, ideologies, and legacies—are intertwined; the lives of these empires inform each other as models as cautionary tales, depending on historical circumstances. Therefore, this seminar will focus on each case study in turn but will seek to identify underlying characteristics and practices that exist in all cases, so as to construct a unified study of comparative empires and material cultures.

In addition to these explorations, there will be focused studies of examples of material culture. Individuals or groups of students (depending on class size) will choose a type of artifact (e.g. public architecture, funerary architecture/goods, luxury items, etc.) found in all four empires, compare them, and present their findings to the seminar. A short (5 pages) individually written paper will be expected from this analysis. This material will form the basis for the creation of a ‘virtual exhibit’ of these illustrative artifacts, which is envisioned as a long-term outcome of this class. The last part of the seminar will be dedicated both to the final preparation and review of the virtual exhibit, and presentation of individual final papers (20 pages) related to specific objects or to themes covered in the class.

Aspects of this class will be undertaken in conjunction with members of the faculty and/or students of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), including a class taught by CUHK faculty member, Prof. Jenny So. The virtual exhibit of artifacts will also be conceived jointly with CUHK faculty and students, and will draw upon the collections of Brown, RISD, and the Art Museum of CUHK.

Course assessment:

1) Active participation in class discussion (25%)

2) Individual or group presentation of artifact type, with individually

written 5 page report (25%)

3) Presentation of final project and final paper of 16-20 pages in length (50%)

Seminar schedule

Week of:

January 23: Introduction

Readings:

Selections from H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture: ‘Introduction: Locations of Culture’; ‘Articulating the archaic: cultural difference and colonial nonsense; ‘The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: the question of agency’; ‘How newness enters the world: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation’

January 30: What is an empire?

Readings:

J. F. Cherry, ed. The Archaeology of Empires. World Archaeology 23:2 (to be split up among students)

‘Part I: Sources, approaches, definitions’ in S.E. Alcock, T.N. D’Altroy, K.D. Morrision, and C.M. Sinopoli, eds., Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History (2001)

C. Sinopoli, ‘The archaeology of empires’. Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994)

February 6: Colonialism, culture, and collecting

Readings:

N. Thomas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Chapter 3 ‘The Indigenous Appropriation of European Things’ and Chapter 4 ‘The European Appropriation of Indigenous Things’

C. Gosden and C. Knowles. Collecting Colonialism, Material Culture and Colonial Change, Chapter 1, ‘ People, Objects and Colonial Relations’; Chapter 3, ‘The Collectors and their Collections’

T. Bennett. The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics, Chapter 3, ‘The political rationality of the Museum’

S. Macdonald, ed. A Companion to Museum Studies, R. Beier-de Haan, ‘Re-staging Histories and Identities’

G. Wright, ed. The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology, G. Wright ‘National Culture under Colonial Auspices: The École Française d’Extrême-Orient’; A. Coombes ‘Ethnography, Popular Culture, and Institutional Power: Narratives of Benin Culture in the British Museum, 1897-1992’

February 13: The Roman Empire

Readings:

P. Zanker. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, selections

R. R. R. Smith, ‘Cultural Choice and Political Identity in Honorific Portraits in the Greek East in the Second Century AD’, JRS v. 88 (1988)

S. Scott and J. Webster, eds. Roman Imperialsim and Provincial Art (2003), J. Webster ‘Art as resistance and negotiation’

S.E. Alcock, T.N. D’Altroy, K.D. Morrison, and C.M. Sinopoli, eds. Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History (2001), G. Woolf, ‘Inventing empire in ancient Rome’

A. Bounia, The Nature of Classical Collecting, Collectors and Collections 100 BCE-100 CE, Chapter 2 ‘Collecting Material Testimonies: antiquarianism and notions of the past’; Chapter 6 ‘Visiting Pliny’s Collection: reading a ‘museum’; Chapter 9 ‘’Furnishing’ the Collector’s World: Cicero’s Epistulae and the Verrine Orations’

February 20: The British Empire

Readings:

D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their empire (2002), selections

N. Eaton, ‘Nostalgia for the Exotic: Creating an Imperial Art in London, 1750-1793’, Eighteenth Century Studies v. 39 (2006)

P. Cain and T. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1690-2000 (2000), Chapter 1 ‘The Problem and the Context’

S. Cheang, ‘Women, Pets, and Imperialism: The British Pekingese Dog and Nostalgia for Old China’, Journal of British Studies, v. 45 (2006)

T. Barringer and T. Flynn, eds. Colonialism and the Object: Empire, material culture, and the museum. T. Barringer, ‘The South Kensington Museum and the colonial project’; C. Clunas, ‘China in Britain: The imperial collections’; N. Ata-Ullah, ‘Stylistic hybridity and colonial art and design education: a wooden carved screen by Ram Singh’

February 27: The American Empire

Readings:

S. Lens, The Forging of the American Empire, from the Revolution to Vietnam: a History of American Imperialism (2003), selections

D. Harvey, The New Imperialism (2003), selections

S. Dyson, Ancient Marbles to American Shores, Classical Archaeology in the United States, Chapter 2 ‘The Creation of Classical Archaeology in America’; Chapter 4 ‘The Formation of the Museum Tradition’

J. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, a Critical Introduction (1991), selections

R. Laurence Moore and M. Vaudagna, eds. The American Century in Europe (2003); A. Brinkley, ‘The Concept of an American Century’; D. Ellwood, ‘American Myth, American Model, and the Quest for British Modernity’; V. Berghahn, ‘European Elitism, American Money, and Popular Culture’

March 5: The Chinese Empire

Readings to be assigned by Prof. Jenny So, CUHK

March 12: Individual or group artifact/image presentations

Readings to be determined based on artifacts chosen by students

March 19: Individual or group artifact/image presenations

Readings to be determined based on artifacts chosen by students

March 26: Spring Break, no class meeting

April 2: Individual or group artifact/image presentations

Readings to be determined based on artifacts chosen by students

April 9: Presentations of final projects/contributions to virtual exhibition

Readings to be assigned by presenting students

April 16: Presentations of final projects/contributions to virtual exhibition

Readings to be assigned by presenting students

April 23: Presentations of final projects/contributions to virtual exhibition

Readings to be assigned by presenting students

Final papers are due May 8, with no exception.

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