HIST123

Description

This course introduces students to the history of consumer culture since the 17th century, traversing Britain, China, India, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and the United States. Each week, we will examine one particular commodity (opium, tea, tobacco, money, falcon, cosmetics, music, fortune-telling, etc.). Using the lenses of gender, class, materiality, and politics, we will discuss how people in the past and the historians who study those commodities have defined and interpreted the importance of consumption that shaped the global economy and history. Class discussions will include the following questions, among others: How are identities - national, class, gender, racial, ethnic - shaped by and through the experience of purchasing goods and services? How has the experience of buying and selling goods changed over time? How do we define "choice," "necessity," "value," and "comfort" within a culture designed to craft or suppress new desires? How has consumption affected the environment, human labor, health, and the senses of pleasure and belongings?