Domestic Impressions: The Visual and Material Culture of the American Family Home, 1750-1890

Led by Katherine C. Grier

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) encourages and facilitates the use and understanding of popular images by scholars in a variety of disciplines including American studies, gender studies, history, art history, literature, and theatre. The 2013 Summer Seminar, Domestic Impressions: The Visual and Material Culture of the American Family Home, 1750-1890 will be held July 7-12, 2013 at the American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA.

Images of and in the American family home abound with clues to attitudes, values, and beliefs. This seminar will guide participants in “how to look” and will introduce constructive and instructive ways of using images and objects as invaluable tools in scholarship and in the classroom. Sessions at the week-long seminar will explore American identity in profound and tangible ways through the visual and material culture of the home. Participants will also have free time for access to the Society’s collections to pursue their research interests.

Through workshops and lectures the seminar will allow participants first-hand access to the rich collection of eighteen and nineteenth-century prints, book illustrations, periodicals, photographs, maps, sheet music covers, and ephemera of all kinds at AAS. The seminar will include at least one field trip to an area house museum.

Katherine C. Grier, Professor of History, Director of the Ph.D. Program in American Civilization, and Director of Museum Studies at the University of Delaware. Guest faculty includes Karen Sanchez-Eppler (Amherst College), Sarah Anne Carter (Chipstone Foundation), Judy Kertesz (North Carolina State University).