Money and the Muse: An Introduction to Cultural History
Culture is one of the most complicated concepts, and yet we use the word all the time. This course is about how to think about culture, introducing you to the field of cultural history. Through this exploration into cultural history you will learn how to analyze and articulate how people ascribe meaning to various ideas, objects, and practices. We focus on two meanings of culture: first, the worldview definition: how do you analyze how people construct meaning? Second, we focus on the arts. The argument of this course is that cultural objects tell us about how people make sense of the world around them, especially in places like Eastern Europe where art took on political and social significance it did not elsewhere. Culture helps us analyze… culture.