History and Its Objects

In History and Its Objects, Peter N. Miller uncovers the forgotten origins of our fascination with exploring the past through its artifacts by highlighting the role of antiquarianism in grasping the significance of material culture.

Peter N. Miller is Dean and Professor at Bard Graduate Center. He is the author most recently of Peiresc's Mediterranean World, editor of Cultural Histories of the Material World, and coeditor of Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800.

The book's unconventional structure beautifully highlights Miller's nuanced way of accounting for connections and disconnections in the story he is telling. It is an inspiring model of longue durée history that subtly negotiates between continuity and rupture.... A great achievement that will be of interest to scholars of interdisciplinary material culture studies, art history and archaeology, historiography, intellectual history, and eighteenth—and nineteenth-century Germany, as well as to artists and museum practitioners.

The history of the study of things is an enormous subject, but there is no one better suited to tackle it than Peter N. Miller. Author of two extraordinary books and numerous essays on early modern antiquarianism, Miller is ideally positioned to write what he modestly describes as "an outline history of how people have thought about studying objects as evidence."

Nathan Schlanger, École nationale des chartes, Paris:

Weaving together literary and scholarly insights, History and Its Objects will prove indispensable reading for historians and cultural historians, as well as anthropologists and archeologists worldwide.

Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge:

Peter N. Miller offers an original approach to the history of things, bringing what he calls a 'submerged history' of things to the surface.

Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University:

In this remarkable book, Peter N. Miller unearths an unsuspected genealogy for material culture studies and cultural history. We owe Miller a debt of gratitude for laying bare this deep history and revealing that in our present celebration of material culture, we are joining a long conversation.

Matthias Bruhn, Humboldt University Berlin:

In its clarity, History and Its Objects is a pure pleasure to read. Peter N. Miller tells his story with great erudition and in a personal tone, elegantly composing it from numerous historical examples.

Bernard L. Herman, George B. Tindall Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Chair, Department of American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

A scholarly triumph, Peter N. Miller's History and Its Objects offers a sweeping and often deeply personal intellectual voyage along the long arc of the 'material turn' in the Western philosophy of objects. Miller combines deep erudition and an accessible voice in a work that speaks to the very heart of how and what objects mean.

Martin Mulsow, University of Erfurt:

History and Its Objects is a wonderful book. Peter N. Miller's great achievement is to offer a coherent narrative, step by step, generation by generation. It is the finding of a hidden path through a jungle of literature that has fallen into oblivion.