Pimp Cups and Soulcraft

My Advanced Material Culture class took an interesting turn this week: we made pimp cups. (For those of you unfamiliar with these artifacts, look here, here and here.) The genesis of this project was my request for someone to share a craft with the rest of the class. I'd made this request at the beginning of the semester, but no one stepped up at the time. They claimed not to know how to make anything, or nothing very interesting. Thanks to Fiona, we all know how to make pimp cups now. She supplied the blanks, bling and glue, and I chipped in to help pay the bill. My observations:

• I have not seen a class so quiet since the last time I gave a final exam. They were totally absorbed for about 30 minutes. Even the ones who are usually checking their phones or "taking notes" on their laptops.
• They got the connections between this activity and our first text "Shop Class as Soulcraft". Yes, craft engages the mind, Yes, it's problem-solving. Yes, materials impose discipline. (Be careful with the epoxy, or you make a mess or even glue your fingers together.)
  

Today, I am going to show them how to crochet a granny square, and we'll talk about crafting as part of childhood. I have some toy catalogs to share that might help jog their memories. The first day of class, one of my students made an off-hand comment about crafts are "kid stuff", and it keeps calling me back. Nearly all of the crafts I do today I learned as child, yet I don't see them as childish. The processes we learn as children have the potential to grow and mature as we do.

Artifacts of Loss -- and Survival

My Craft and production class is discussing Jane Dusselier's amazing and heart-breaking book, Artifacts of Loss. Dusselier uses material culture -- arts, crafts, gardens and other creations -- to describe and analyze the lives of Japanese-Americans in WWII concentration camps. One of the questions I've been mulling over is whether any handmade objects survived from the Nazi concentration camps. So far, I have found only this:

Eva Klein David — Clandestine Crafts That Saved Lives

Still looking for more, will post if I find any.

Spring course: Simplicity and Anti-consumption in American Life

It's only October and barely fall, but I am working on my new spring course on Simplicity and Anti-consumption in American Life. The Craft and Production course is going well, considering attendance has been cut by a third for the few weeks and yesterday was even worse (5 students out of 11 showed up!). The size of the class is a bit disappointing, but that's probably a function of the prerequisite and the craziness of all the AMST upper level being offered at the same time. Here's my pitch for the spring course:

AMST498C Consumer Culture: Simplicity and Anti-consumption in American Life (Spring 2010 W 4:00pm- 6:40pm)
Prerequisite: AMST201 AND either AMST203 or AMST205.

American Studies scholars have argued that consumer culture has eclipsed civic culture in its importance in American life.  This argument maintains that we define ourselves as Americans by what we consume; even the iconic American Dream is often expressed in terms of possessions. In AMST201 and AMS203 or AMST205 you have probably been exposed to texts or conducted research about advertising, marketing, consumer-identity, branding, and other aspects of consumption. In AMST 498C we will examine another strand in this narrative: the efforts, movements and trends that resist or oppose excessive consumption. Sometimes these impulses spring from necessity (the Great Depression, wartime) but often they are rooted in convictions about the moral peril of personal wealth or about environmental sustainability. We will consider historical evidence (Puritan sumptuary laws, Utopian communities, 60s communes) as well as recent trends such as frugality and Voluntary Simplicity.

I am considering offering it publicly via iTunesU, just in case the actual student count is anemic.

Update (response to a student query):

Working list of texts -
The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture (David Shi)
The Machine in the Garden (Leo Marx) (maybe... it's an American Studies classic)
The Good Life (Scott Nearing)
one of the many recent books on Voluntary Simplicity (or I may offer a choice on this one...)
selections from Theory of the Leisure Class (Thorstein Veblen) and Walden (Henry David Thoreau)
We'll also be viewing some excellent documentaries (such as Afluenza), blogs and websites (Center for the New American Dream, Adbusters)

As for format, with 2 hours and 40 minutes to fill, I am thinking about 1/3 lecture, 1/3 discussion, 1/3 other (viewing, student sharing).