History & Theory of Design

Sample courses offered pertaining to the History and Theory of Design
 

DESN 40580 - History of Design: Forms Values and Technology
Dennis Doordan

This course will provide a historical perspective on the development of industrial and product design in the modern era. In the modern era, design has been a powerful tool for shaping the development of technology and articulating the values of modern culture. The role of the modern designer as both a facilitator and a critic of industrial technology will be examined.

DESN 43523 - The Meaning of Things: Consumption in American History
Sophie White

"The Meaning of Things:" asks how objects as diverse as a ND class ring, a pair of jeans, a Lava Lamp or a rosary acquire meaning and value. This course will introduce students to a range of practices relating to consumption in American history. We will investigate the gendered aspects of production, marketing, buying and using goods as these impact not only on gender, but also on the construction of a range of identities. As part of the process of working with material things, much emphasis will be placed on methods and theories for analyzing objects, in class and in experiential learning beyond the classroom (to include a component on material culture and Catholicism). This will lay the foundation for students to write substantive individual research papers on a "thing" of their choice.

DESN 35320 - Anthropology of Everyday Life
Meredith Chesson

Have you ever pondered how people live(d) in a world without television, YouTube, iPhones, Lady GaGa, and cellphones? Why have bellbottoms come and gone twice in the last 50 years? Will we be forced to relive the fashion mistakes of the 1980s? What new stuff will people invent and sell next? In asking and answering these questions, we must focus on one underlying query: What does our stuff really say about who we are and who we want to be? This course combines lectures, discussions, and interactive small group activities to explore the nature and breadth of peoples' relationships with their things. We will investigate why and how people make and use different types of objects, and how the use of these material goods resonates with peoples' identities in the deep past, recent history, and today. Since everyone in the class will already be an expert user and consumer of things, we will consider how people today use material objects to assert, remake, reclaim, and create identities, and compare today's practices to those of people who lived long ago. Class members will learn about how anthropologists, including ethnographers (studying people today) and archaeologists (studying past peoples) think about and approach the material nature of our social, economic, and political lives. We will discuss why styles and technologies change through time, and why, in the end, there is very little new under the sun in terms of human behaviors and the way people produce and consume goods. The topical breadth of this workshop encompasses most social science disciplines, including history, economics, psychology, and anthropology, and resonates with classics, art history, and gender studies.