13 Things: Archaeology, material culture, science studies and design

ARCH0300 -*room change - RI Hall - 109*
a course with Krysta Ryzewski krysta_ryzewski@brown.edu (office: RI Hall, 212, office hours TBA, but walk-ins always welcome!)

(Well, 4 of 13 is not bad for an image . . . )

This course foregrounds one thing per week to introduce different approaches to studying things and to consider connections between technology, culture, science, engineering, and design. In total, 13 things: the wheel, a Neolithic Megalith, a castle, the light bulb, a punch bowl, a map, the caravel, barbed wire, a blade, the mirror, a Coca-Cola bottle, the portable radio, and the camera. Placing emphasis on questions of relations between humans and things over the long term, the course critically questions the importance of goods, technologies, artifacts, and the materials they're made of for humanity. 13 Things is designed to appeal to a wide range of students because the course unpacks things from a number of disciplinary angles, including anthropology, archaeology, design studies, engineering, and the history of technology, to name but a few. Students are charged with the task of selecting a thing, whether ancient or contemporary, and researching it building on the perspectives encountered in the course.