HIST 552RObjects & People: 1300 to 1700

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Objects, People and their History: 1300 to 1700 Taught by Aparajita Das This undergraduate seminar, aimed at history majors, will focus on the relationship between objects, humans, and the possibilities they offer for history-writing of the early modern period. The period between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed an escalated global movement of people and things. In this seminar, we approach books, textiles, boxes, plants, currency, and paper, as sources of history writing. We will interrogate themes like object-agency, labor and commodification amongst others. Throughout the course, using online databases, students will compose historical questions about the crafting, collecting, and circulating objects in history. The ultimate goal is to expand the archive and to compose essays that demonstrate complex argumentation about the things historians encounter.