Material Culture

In British Columbia by the Road, Ben Bradley takes readers on an unprecedented journey through the history of roads, highways, and motoring in Brit...

When Susan Sontag first proposed the idea of an ecology of images, she meant it as an exhortation to be vigilant against the vast surplus of pictur...

How did ordinary men and women dress in early modern Europe? What fabrics and garments formed the essential elements of fashion for artisans and sh...

The Porous Museum examines questions of museum practice, aesthetics and politics through a focused study of The National Museum of the Romanian Pea...

Winner of the Association of Dress Historians Book of the Year Award, 2022 Traditionally associated with rural ways of life in England, often hand...

Analysing 100 material objects which helped to shape the Spanish Civil War, this textbook explores one of the seminal events of 20th century throug...

Analysing 100 material objects which helped to shape the Spanish Civil War, this textbook explores one of the seminal events of 20th century throug...

An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage looks at the houses, consumption an...

An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage looks at the houses, consumption an...

'Loot held me spellbound from the first page...an expertly-plotted, deeply affecting novel ' Maggie OFarrellA cinematic novel of empire, colonialis...

This is the first book-length exploration of the clothes worn in early modern Rome and provides novel insights into the city of Rome during one of ...

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum delves into the history and the changing material culture in Europe through the stories of a basket, a carpet, ...

Adopting the modernist master Vladimir Nabokov as its guide, Nabokov in Motion: Modernity and Movement is an exploration of the radically changing ...

During the interwar years, a proliferation of violence encroached upon the glossy, idealistic world of fashion: from the curiously common appearanc...

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeaus notion of the everyday as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shap...

'Extraordinary and thrilling ... This story should be known to every man, woman and child' - Lemn SissayIn 1868, British troops charged into the mo...

Manuscript albums are oftentimes contradictory objects: ephemeral yet monumental, coherent yet inviting change. Collecting items made by others, ow...

The Prater a centerpiece of Viennese history as a reflection of changing times The Prater represents like no other place the history of Vienna a...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A classic teenage fetish object, the A...

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. This book reveals how shoes played a powerful role in the wider story of shifts in...

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. This book reveals how shoes played a powerful role in the wider story of shifts in...

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearA Guardian Best Architecture Book of the YearSharp, revealing, funny.The GuardianAn original and even occasi...

Departing from more conscribed definitions, this book argues for an expansion of the concept of Creolization in terms of duration, temporality, pop...

Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association's 2018 Achievement AwardThe pluralism of South Asia belies any singular reading of its heri...

In contemporary society it would seem self-evident that people allow the market to determine the values of products and services. For everything fr...

From Oaxacan wood carvings to dessert kitchens in provincial France, Critical Craft presents thirteen ethnographies which examine what defines and ...

In recent years architectural discourse has witnessed a renewed interest in materiality under the guise of such familiar tropes as 'material honest...

In this book the author explores the various meanings assigned to goods sold retail from 1550 to 1820 and how their labels were understood. The fir...

How do people communicate their romantic feelings? Gift giving is one way. Giving and receiving of gifts is a characteristic of intimate relationsh...

While the importance of the relationship between anthropology and contemporary art has long been recognized, the discussion has tended to be among ...

While the importance of the relationship between anthropology and contemporary art has long been recognized, the discussion has tended to be among ...

The pluralism of South Asia belies any singular reading of its heritage. In spite of this diversity, its cultural traditions retain certain attribu...

Although much has been written on the making of art objects as a means of engaging in creative productions of the self (most famously Alfred Gells ...

Situated on an intersection between Material Culture Studies, History and Museum and Archival Studies, this book investigates the material world of...

The Material Dynamics of Festivals in the Graeco-Roman East explores the various ways in which the experience of civic festivals in the Graeco-Roma...

Every literary household in nineteenth-century Britain had a commonplace book, scrapbook, or album. Coleridge called his collection Fly-Catchers, w...

Death studies typically focus on the death of humans, overlooking the wider factors involved in social and natural processes around death. This edi...

The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pioneers in reconstructing the global image discourse ...

The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to have been Russias first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast, So...