Consumer Culture

Catalog description

This course examines the history, material infrastructure, trends, and impacts of consumption in the United States. It explores consumer culture through the interdisciplinary perspective of American studies, integrating politics, economics, food, and culture. Central topics will include mass production and mass distribution, advertising and desire, the meaning of things, the construction and production of identity in the marketplace, and the impact of consumption on the environment, other people, and our own bodies. Students will explore how consumerism affects belonging, citizenship, and membership in a heterogenous transnational America. Drawing from a diverse array of primary and secondary sources (i.e. history, literature, anthropology, advertisements, digital culture, etc) we will sample some of the theories and methods that distinguish the critical and creative thinking of the American Studies perspective. SI-01.