There is something about introducing an object or an image into a classroom that brings a lesson to life. Perhaps it is the same fascination that we felt as children when classmates shared their personal belongings during “show and tell” in elementary school. Perhaps it is a need to see and make a tactile connection with the lessons we are learning. Perhaps it is an inner desire to make a real connection with new things, a desire to connect and give legitimacy to the subject, to the object, to our learning.
Whatever the case, any teacher will tell you that the introduction of objects and images into a lesson does raise the level of interest and the engagement of most students. A lecture on the poetry of Walt Whitman will take on a new life when a photo of the long haired, Santa-like figure is introduced to the classroom; a discussion of political elections will likely be enhanced by a collection of presidential campaign buttons, and a discussion of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln will take on a somewhat ghostly or mysterious tone when students are exposed to his top hat, a February 14, 1865 ticket to Ford’s theater, or a pair of Abraham Lincoln life masks, showing his youthful features as a candidate and the more worn face of a president who struggled to keep our nation together through a civil war.
We regularly view material culture when we go to museums and exhibits. The things that we view in the glass cases across our country are really no different from the images, ideas and representations that we introduce in our classroom. Whether we are looking at the priceless Hope diamond at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History or a colonial bottle dug up in the parking lot of a local high school and on display at an area museum, the objects intrigue us and speak to us. They invite us into past worlds and distant places and, perhaps most importantly, they tell a story. Keats told a story in his ekphrastic ode, “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” as the figures on the ancient vessel spoke to him. Robert Browning’s angry Duke gazed upon a painting and told a story that really told us more about him than his “Last Duchess.” What stories will our students discover gazing at material culture, as they make connections with objects and images from over a hundred and fifty years ago? In his essay, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” art historian Jules David Prown comments on material culture as a study, “The underlying premise is that objects made or modified by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged.”1 The objects are a connection not only to our readings, but to the past, giving students an avenue, a door, a method to interact with artists and ideas of years past.
