Social Experiences in Consumer Culture E58.2215
Department of Culture and Communication
New York University
Wednesdays 4:55-7:05
Silver 402
Prof. Aurora Wallace
239 Greene Street, Suite 724
Office Hours: Mondays 2-4 or by app’t
Course Description
This course takes an historical approach to the question of consumer culture in America,
by focusing on important shifts in population, production, technology and lifestyles over
the 19th and 20th centuries. It will follow not only material changes in consumer culture
but also the debates that circulate around them. Specific attention will be given to how
consumption intersects with class, gender, race, space, youth, work, leisure and activism.
Format
The course will be run on a collaborative seminar model. Participation by students will
provide the structure for class meetings rather than lectures by the professor. It is
therefore imperative that students have completed each week’s readings in advance, and
come to class prepared to discuss them critically. Regular writing assignments will be
discussed in class as well as being submitted for grades.
The reading package for this course is for sale at Advanced Copy, 552 LaGuardia Place
Assignments and Grading
Five papers of five pages each……………….…………….…………………..5x10= 50%
Weekly participation……………………………………….………………………….20%
Final Exam…………………………………………………………………………….30%
Five papers will be due over the course of the semester. On the day that they are due,
students should be prepared to discuss them in class. These papers will be graded on the
basis of originality, clarity of thought, and integration of course material. Each paper
should be no longer than 5 pages in length. Some suggestions for topics have been
provided on the next page. You may choose any one of these, or one of your own. It is
strongly urged that to the greatest extent possible these papers be written using scholarly
sources, without reference to online encyclopedias. All works consulted must be cited, no
matter the length or substance of the idea being used. “A hallmark of the educated student
is the ability to recognize and acknowledge information derived from others.... Plagiarism
is presenting someone else’s work as though it were your own. More specifically,
plagiarism is to present as your own: a sequence of words quoted without quotation
marks from another writer, a paraphrased passage from another writer’s work, facts or
ideas gathered, organized, and reported by someone else, orally and/or in writing. Since
plagiarism is a matter of fact, not of the student’s intention, it is crucial that
acknowledgement of sources be accurate and complete. Even where there is no conscious
intention to deceive, the failure to make appropriate acknowledgment constitutes
plagiarism.” (School of Education Bulletin, p. 236)
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Historical ad review (January 31)
Bromo-Seltzer ≈ Carnation Evaporated Milk ≈ Colgate Toothpaste ≈ Fairy Soap ≈ Gem
Safety Razors ≈ Jell-O ≈ Juicy Fruit Gum ≈ Lucky Strike Cigarettes ≈
Schedule of Classes
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January 17 – Introduction and Course Structure
January 24 – The Terms of Debate
Raymond Williams, “Consumer”
Thorstein Veblen, “Conspicuous Consumption,”
Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry,”
Mary Isherwood, “The Uses of Goods” and “Exclusion, intrusion”
Jean Baudrilliard, “Consumer Society,”
January 31 - Emergence of Consumer Society (Historical ad review due)
Susan Strasser, “Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,”
Ewen and Ewen, “American Metamorphosis” and “The Magic of the Marketplace”
Mark A. Sweincicki, “Consuming Brotherhood: Men’s Culture, Style and Recreation as
Consumer Culture 1880-1930,”
Andrew Heinze, “From Scarcity to Abundance: The Immigrant as Consumer,”
February 7 – What Good is Consumption?
Colin Campbell, “Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming,”
Steven Waldman, “The Tyranny of Choice,”
Michael Schudson, “Delectable Materialism: Second Thoughts on Consumer Culture,”
February 14 – Spaces of Consumption (Store Review due)
William Leach, “Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925”
Lizabeth Cohen, “The Reconfiguring Community Marketplaces,”
John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure: Malls Power and Resistance”
February 21 – Consuming Children
Lisa Jacobson “Development of Juvenile Advertising”, “Boy Consumers” and
“Adolescent Consumers
February 28 - Magazines (Magazine Review Due)
Jan Cohn, “This Niagara of Print”
Kenon Breazeale, “In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the
Male Consumer,”
Kelley Massoni, “Teena Goes to Market: Seventeen Magazine and the Early Construction
of the Teen Girl as Consumer,”
March 7 - Constructing Race
Cheryl Greenberg, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work,”
Elizabeth Chin, “What Are You Looking At, You White People?” and “Hemmed In and
Shut Out”
March 14 – Spring Break
March 21 - Taste and Lifestyle (Consumer Item review due)
Pierre Bourdieu, “The Aesthetic Sense as the Sense of Distinction”
Douglas Holt, “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?”
Mike Featherstone, “Lifestyle and Consumer Culture”
Bill Osgerby, “The Bachelor Pad as Culture Icon,
March 28 – Pre and Post War Consumption Practices
Daniel Horowitz, “Chastened Consumption”
Kathy Newman, “I Won’t Buy You Anything But Love, Baby”
Robert Zieger, “Uncle Sam Wants You to Go Shopping”
April 4 – Dematerialization – (Website review due)
Mark Poster, “Consumption and Digital Commodities”
Raymond Burke, “Technology and the Customer Interface”
Juliet Schor, “The Downshifter Next Door”
April 11 – Importing and Exporting Consumption
Leslie Sklair, “Social Movements and Global Capitalism,”
Robert Kozinets, “Adversaries of Consumption”
Craig Thompson, “The Starbucks Brandscape and Consumers’ (Anticorporate)
Experiences of Globalization”
April 18 - New Directions
Caren Kaplan, “Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of US Consumer Identity”
Jay Clarkson, “Contesting Masculinity’s Makeover”
Lucy Montgomery, “Beijing Bling”
April 25 – Final exam