The Meaning of Things - in Three Objects

Catalog description

Students will study three objects (or categories of objects) through interdisciplinary consideration of their design, history, social and cultural impact. Key learning outcomes are not just knowledge of the objects being studied; they also involve the ability to integrate different ways of knowing and applying that to the objects in terms of their broader social and historical contexts, their consequences for and impact on human experience, as well as the design problems they pose and solve. Each student will think about how his or her own chosen profession involves either the production of an object or the practice of a profession. In this sense, The Meaning of Things encourages critical entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurship that is reflective about its social, cultural, and historical debts to the past and to other cultures and societies. The course is team-taught by a group of at least three faculty from across RIT.