All across the humanities fields there is a new interest in materials and materiality. This is the first book to capture and study the “material turn” in the humanities from all its varied perspectives. Cultural Histories of the Material World brings together top scholars from all these different fields—from Art History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Folklore, History, History of Science, Literature, Philosophy—to offer their vision of what cultural history of the material world looks like and attempt to show how attention to materiality can contribute to a more precise historical understanding of specific times, places, ways, and means. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of future possibilities and new perspectives.

A survey of spectacular breadth, covering the history of decorative arts and design worldwide over the past six hundred years

In The Art of the Jewish Family, Laura Arnold Leibman examines five objects owned by a diverse group of Jewish women who all lived in New York in the years between 1750 and 1850: a letter from impoverished Hannah Louzada seeking assistance; a set of silver cups owned by Reyna Levy Moses; an ivory miniature owned by Sarah Brandon Moses, who was born enslaved and became one of the wealthiest Jewish women in New York; a book created by Sarah Ann Hays Mordecai; and a family silhouette owned by Rebbetzin Jane Symons Isaacs. These objects offer intimate and tangible views into the lives of Jewish American women from a range of statuses, beliefs, and lifestyles--both rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, slaves and slaveowners. Each chapter creates a biography of a single woman through an object, offering a new methodology that looks past texts alone to material culture in order to further understand early Jewish American women's lives and restore their agency as creators of Jewish identity. While much of the available history was written by men, the objects that Leibman studies were made for and by Jewish women. Speaking to American Jewish life, women's studies, and American history, The Art of the Jewish Family sheds new light on the lives and values of these women, while also revealing the social and religious structures that led to Jewish women being erased from historical archives. The Art of the Jewish Family was the winner of three 2020 National Jewish Book Awards: the Celebrate 350 Award for American Jewish Studies, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award for History, and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women's Studies.

Considers the future of conservation and its connection to the human sciences. This volume brings together the findings from a five-year research project that seeks to reimagine the relationship between conservation knowledge and the humanistic study of the material world. The project, "Cultures of Conservation," was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and included events, seminars, and an artist-in-residence. The effort to conserve things amid change is part of the human struggle with the nature of matter. For as long as people have made things and kept things, they have also cared for and repaired them. Today, conservators use a variety of tools and categories developed over the last one hundred and fifty years to do this work, but in the coming decades, new kinds of materials and a new scale of change will pose unprecedented challenges. Looking ahead to this moment from the perspectives of history, philosophy, materials science, and anthropology, this volume explores new possibilities for both conservation and the humanities in the rethinking of active matter.

Examines the relationship between making objects and knowing nature in Europe from the mid-15th to mid-19th centuries

"This book explores the life, professional activities, artistic production and collecting practices of Georges Hoentschel through the objects he collected and created. Essays by the editors, joined by Amy F. Ogata, associate professor at Bard Graduate Center and Christine E. Brennan, senior research associate in Medieval Art as the Metropolitan Museum, address his biography, business contacts, and clients, as well as the arrival of the collection in New York, its lavish four-volume illustrated catalogue, and the medieval collections. Also discussed is Hoentschel's involvement with contemporary art, including his intriguing stoneware creations and designs for a pavilion and interiors at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Fully illustrated catalogue entries explore the astonishing range of objects he collected. Throughout the book, new documentary material from archives and newspapers illuminates this little-explored chapter in the history of collecting decorative arts between France and America at the dawn of the twentieth century."--book jacket.

Derived from the Latin term "ex voto suscepto" meaning made in accordance with a vow, ex votos embody the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of the people who deposited them. Thus, almost anything, no matter its size, weight, form, or original function, can become a votive object. The category ex voto refers to a particular subset of the material world in which objects are not necessarily made with the intention of being votive, but become charged with votive meaning once they have been consecrated to a deity or deities. The variety of materials, forms, techniques of making, and manner of dedication all suggest that the wide array of materialized aspects of human devotion, function as a category in itself. This volume one of the only collections dedicated exclusively to the subject has been compiled with the assumption that a shared conceptual framework underpins the objects produced as part of the ritual of votive giving, and that by merit of their dedication they have become a category which represents a stage and a place in the life of a material artifact. As such, "Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures," is a comparative study, and the volume ranges from the classical Mediterranean world, through medieval Italy and northern Europe, to the period of the Catholic Reform and on to Mexico, Shinto and Buddhist Japan, and Muslim Iran. This volume will be read with interest and stimulate fresh discussion across cultures and disciplines. "