Commerce, Commodities, and Material Cultures

This research cluster includes both faculty members and graduate students who study the meaning and value of commodities, material artifacts, and consumer practices as they circulate through trade networks, regulatory systems, political economies, and social worlds. Members work in a variety of temporal and geographic fields—the ancient world, medieval and modern Europe, United States, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. Some root their work in the histories of capitalism, labor, and consumer cultures. Others analyze non-capitalistic and premodern systems of trade and exchange. We examine varied types of historical evidence, ranging from cultural productions (art and music) to material artifacts (textiles and ceramics) to written texts (patents and pamphlets). Several of us work on food, beverages, and psychoactive substances in national, imperial, and global contexts. Others focus on the history of retailing, advertising, and networks of innovation. We are also interested in how people use consumer practices and commercial activities to reject, rework and build hierarchies of race, gender, and class and systems of state, colonial and corporate power.

Our cluster combines an emphasis on material conditions with an abiding attention to the production of categories and experiences. We understand social, economic, political, and cultural life as overlapping and mutually constitutive frameworks as opposed to discrete and distinct realms. Both methodologically and theoretically, our research cluster crosses temporal and geographic boundaries so as to reveal historical differences, commonalities, and specificities.

Some of our activities include:

• Quarterly paper workshops in which faculty and graduate students present articles, chapters, and other works-in-progress.
• An annual graduate student retreat, sometimes held in conjunction with the Gender and Sexualities cluster retreat, where students can workshop papers and dissertation chapters and interact with faculty and peers not on their doctoral committees.
• Foster interdisciplinary work across campus.

Cluster Member News: 

Events, Prizes and Fellowships:

Faculty and Lecturers:

• Anthony Barbieri
• Brad Bouley
• Utathya Chattopadhyaya
• Mhoze Chikowero
• Manuel Covo
• Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
• Sharon Farmer
• Mary Hancock
• Lisa Jacobson
• John Lee
• Nelson Lichtenstein
• John Majewski
• Kate McDonald
• Stephan Miescher
• Katie Moore
• Alice O’Connor
• Erika Rappaport
• Luke Roberts
• Sherene Seikaly
• Xiaowei Zheng

Affiliated:

• Eileen Boris
• Claudio Fogu
• Bhaskar Sarkar
• Jenni Sorkin

Current Graduate Students:

• Munther al-Sabbagh
• Kashia Arnold
• David Baillargeon
• Nick Cohen
• Sasha Coles
• Sarah Dunne
• Nicole de Silva
• Masha Fedorova
• Brian J Griffith
• Julie Johnson
• Neil Johnson
• Angélica Márquez-Osuna
• Laura Moore
• Tim Paulson
• Caitlin Rathe
• Sergey Saluschev
• Elizabeth Schmidt
• Stephanie Seketa
• Adreina Soto

Useful Links – Funding, Conferences, Organizations:

Organizations:

• American Folklore Society’s Foodways Section
• Association for the Study of Food and Society
• Business History Conference
• CHORD: Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution

Journals:

• Business History Review
• Enterprise and Society
• Food, Culture and Society
• Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies
• History of Retailing and Consumption
• Journal of Gastronomy and Tourism

Websites/Archives:

• Advertising Archives–large collection of European Ads
• American Marketing Association: List of Archives
• Comma: Center for Modern Literature, Materialism and Aesthetics
• The Food Museum
• Hagley Museum and Library
• Duke University’s Hartman Center for Sales, Marketing and Advertising
• History of Advertising Trust
• The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Art, Science and Medicine
• UC Food Observer
• Wolfsonian FIU