Ontario College of Art & Design

Course Calendar

COURSE DESCRIPTION

HUMN 3B13
STUFF: Material Culture and the Meanings of Things
0.50 Credit(s)
Academic Course
Prerequisite: 7.5 credits, including all first-year requirements (5.0 credits), and 1.0 credit of second-year liberal arts & sciences (including 0.5 credit in VISA/VISC/VISD/VISM).
This course examines the meaning of things, buildings and places and the relationships people establish with them. Interested as much in the methodological questions of how to assess critically the built environment as in philosophical and aesthetic questions of meaning and significance that tend to accompany the interactions with stuff, the course is structured around linked, but independent thematic units. As such, the primary purpose of this course is to provide a framework for the analysis of things and methodological tools for the use of material culture in the study of society, past or present. Here, the intention is to interrogate the central, complex and powerful roles that things of all sorts play in daily life.
Anti-requisite: Students who have taken HUMN 3B92 Special Topic in Humanities: STUFF: Material Culture and the Meaning of Things may not take this course for further credit.
Course was last updated May 2, 2012 - 4:27 PM