American Consumer Culture

This class examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the “good life” through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. We will explore how such things as department stores, nationally advertised brand-name goods, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics. The course is organized both thematically and chronologically. Each period deals with a new development in the history of consumer culture. Throughout we explore both cele…

The syllabus, on MIT OpenCourseWare

The full course — syllabus, assigned readings, problem sets, exams, and lecture notes — lives on OCW. These open the real thing: