MAASA Conference Is Coming Together

Over the past semester, the Material Culture Focus Group has been organizing the 2011 Mid-American American Studies (MAASA) annual meeting, to be held here in Madison April 7-10.  The group received $5,000 to put on a conference we're calling "The Life of the Object," which addresses a variety of aspects of production, consumption, and reuse.  We will also have an exhibit of five artists' work on display throughout the conference, and an interactive event on Friday afternoon.  Here is the list of panel topics:

PRODUCTION (Friday Morning, April 8)

1.  Producing America: Appropriation and Consumption in Twentieth-Century Design

2. Assemblage

3. Imagined Materialities

4. The Legacy of Work: Technology, Craft, and DIY

CONSUMPTION (Saturday Morning, April 9)

5. Consumer Needs: Past, Present, and Future

6. Reconsuming Art  

7. (De)constructing Class in Consumption and Design  

8. Material Negotiation of Social Control  

9. Materiality of Sound  

REUSE (Saturday Afternoon, April 9)

10.  Reconsuming and Remembering  

11.  Creating a Material Past  

12. Changing Space, Changing Memory

13. Making Meaning and the Life Cycle of Objects