This class introduces students to “households” as they are understood in different cultural contexts. They will recognize the articulations between socio-political politics and histories and the household as the primary contexts of socialization and social interactions. The class will emphasize the profoundly political nature of “households” and their affordances for affecting broader social change, including with reference to gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. This class de-naturalizes the “household” and unmoors it from its assumed connections to kinship/family. An archaeological approach to households also emphasizes the agency of those often neglected in historical or discursive understandings of these processes.
