History BC 3429x
Lisa Tiersten
Fall 1998
422A Lehman
Monday 2:10-4:00 4-4733
ltiersten@barnard.columbia.edu
416A Lehman

 

Off. Hrs: Tuesdays, 5:00-7:30

 

CONSUMER CULTURE IN MODERN EUROPE


This seminar will explore the development of the modern European culture of consumption, primarily in England and France, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics to be covered include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, and the construction of modern gender and sex roles through consumption.

 

Course Requirements:

 

Course Materials

A readings are on reserve at the Barnard Library. A Course Reader is available for purchase at Village Copier on 115th Street, between Broadway and Riverside. The following books may be purchased at Labyrinth Books on 112th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam:

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
Jennifer Craik, The Face of Fashion
Michael Miller, The Bon Marché

 

I. Consumer Revolutions

1. Sept. 14: Introduction to the Course: Defining Consumer Culture

2. Sept. 21: The Consumer Revolutions of the 18th Century

Texts:
Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, chs. 1, "The Consumer Revolution of Eighteenth-Century England" and 8, "The Acceptance of Modernity."
Jan de Vries, "Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods," Consumption and the World of Goods, eds. John Brewer and Roy Porter.
Amanda Vickery, "Women and the World of Goods," ch. 14 in Consumption and the World of Goods, eds. John Brewer and Roy Porter.

II. Consumption and the Modern Metropolis in the 19th Century


3. Sept. 28: The Making of the Commercial Metropolis: The Case of Paris

Texts:
Wolfgang Schivelbush, The Railway Journey, chs. 3, "Railroad Space and Railroad Time"; 4, "Panoramic Travel"; 12, "Tracks in the City"; and 13, "Circulation."
Philip Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment, ch. 3, "Haussmannization."
David Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, ch. 1, "Paris in 1850."
T. J. Clark, The Painting of modern Life, ch. 1, "The View From Notre Dame."


4. Oct. 5: The Flâneur and Urban Spectatorship in the Modern Metroplis

Texts: Priscilla Parkhust Ferguson, "The Flâneur On and Off the Streets of Paris," in The Flâneur, ed. Keith Tester.
Deborah Nord, Walking the Victorian Streets, "The City as Theater: London in the 1820s."
Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," in Reflections (146-62).

5. Oct. 12: Fashion and Self-Presentation in the 19th Century

Texts:
Ellen Moers, The Dandy, ch. 1, "Brummell."
David Kuchta, "The Making of the Self-Made Man," in Victoria de Grazia, ed. The Sex of Things.
Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, ch. 2,
"A Century of Fashion."
Georg Simmel, "Fashion," in On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald Levine.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. 4, "Conspicuous Consumption."

6. Oct. 19: The Department Store, the World’s Fair, and the Growth of a Bourgeois Culture of Consumption

Texts:
Michael Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, chs. 1, "New Stores," 2, "The "Grand Magasin," 5, "Selling Consumption," and 6, "Selling the Store."
Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, ch. 4 and 9.
Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, ch. 1, "The
Great Exhibition of Things."

PAPER BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PROSPECTUS DUE.

Slides: 19th-century shops and department stores.

III. Gender and Consumption


7. Oct. 26: Separate Spheres and the Bourgeois Interior

Texts:
Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton, 1-50.
Charles Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste (1872), Introduction, 1-15; ch. VI, 159-84.
Leora Auslander, "The Gendering of Consumer Practices in Nineteenth-Century France" in Victoria de Grazia, The Sex of Things.
Ute Frevert, Women in German History, ch. 3, "The New Bourgeoisie and the New Femininity."

Slides: bourgeois interiors.

8. Nov. 2: Housekeepers and Homewreckers: The Shopper as Social Deviant

Texts:
Mariana Valverde, "The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse," Victorian Studies, vol. 32 (Winter 1989): 169-188.
Patricia O'Brien, "The Kleptomania Diagnosis: Bourgeois Women and Theft in Late Nineteenth-Century France," Journal of Social History (Fall 1983): 65-77.
Guy de Maupassant, "The Necklace," Collected Short Stories.
Gustave LeBon, The Crowd, ch. 2, "The Sentiments and Morality of Crowds," Pts. I-III only.

Slides: advertising|

9. Nov. 9: no class

10. Nov. 16: Consumer Culture and the Body.

Texts:
Jennifer Craik, The Face of Fashion, chs. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8.
Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, ch. 5, "Fashion and Eroticism."

Slides: Fashion and the body.

    IV. Consumption and Cultural Crisis in the 20th Century

11. Nov. 23: Interpreting Consumer Culture

Group presentations on the following texts:

Texts:
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, ch. 11, "Feminism and Fashion."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, ch. XVIII, "Social Life," 528-39 only.
Daniel Miller, "Could Shopping Ever Really Matter?" (typescript)
Jean Baudrillard, "The Ecstasy of Communication," The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster, 126-133.
Colin Campbell, "Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming," Critical Review, vol. 8, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 503-520.

****Tuesday, Nov. 24: The Marriage of Maria Braun (dir. Fassbinder, 1978) ****
7:00-9:00 pm, 306B Barnard

12. Nov. 30: Affluence and Americanization in the Postwar Era

Texts:
Erica Carter, "Alice in the Consumer Wonderland," Gender and Generation, eds. Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava, 185-214.
Angela Partington, "Popular Fashion and Working-Class Affluence," in Chic Thrills, eds. Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, ch. 9, "The Golden Year."
The Marriage of Maria Braun

13. Dec. 7: Postmodernity and consumption

Texts:
Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, "Travels in Hyperreality," 1-58.
Lauren Langman, "Neon Cages: Shopping for Subjectivity," in Lifestyle Shopping, ed. Rob Shields.
Peter Parsi, "‘Black Bart’ Simpson: Appropriation and Revitalization in Commodity Culture," Journal of Popular Culture 27, no. 1 (summer 1993): 125-42.
John Fiske, Reading the Popular, ch. 2, "Shopping for Pleasure."

14. Dec. 14: Globalization

Texts:
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Part I, "Global Flows."

PAPER DUE DECEMBER 17.