I, too, remember the first time I was introduced to the study of material culture in an academic setting.  I was in Laurie Sterling's undergrad literature class in nineteenth-century American literature and we were reading A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave and Dr. Sterling brought some images of Douglas that were printed in this book and his later work My Bondage and My Freedom.  We were asked to determine what information or attitudes we thought the images were supposed to communicate to readers of both texts and how the differences of these images indicated a difference in Douglas's messages in the texts or some other change.  I can remember thinking at the time, "why are we looking at pictures?  This isn't what we do" (we, of course, meaning English majors).  Now, ironically, here I am years later doing something very similar with Wilde.  But I am continually amazed by the types of objects that literature scholars use to investigate texts, audiences, authors, reading practices, etc.  While I once felt that my discipline limited me to printed materials, I now see, with the help of scholars such as Julian Yates and his oranges, that the study of many types of objects can and do help inform our understanding of the study of literary texts or the people who encountered them.  In response to Josh's question, then, I see more similarities rather than differences between disciplines studying material culture, because the types of objects we use and the questions we ask of these objects share many commonalities.  Over the last two weeks, whether we interrogated trunks, maps, or artists books, we all brought a set of foundational questions to these objects like "how was this object used?" even though many of our questions were informed by our disciplinary training.

As an aside, I also googled "material culture" to see what hits came up and the first was a website for a store in Philly called Material Culture.  It appears to be an antique store, but I was intrigued by both their use of the term material culture instead of so-and-so's antique store and the way their website seems to align historical value and monetary value: "It's ironic that many of the antique and vintage furnishing and arts sold at Material Culture are priced at a fraction of the sterile, industrial knockoffs that fill the profusion of online catalog sellers and chain stores that pay lip service to art, tradition and sustainability.  Between the high and low there is a middle path; it is there, slightly ahead of the curve, that Material Culture welcomes the public" (www.materialculture.com/aboutus).  They seem to promote the idea that age=authenticity=value and it seems to me that a general public would probably buy this notion.  Is there a difference between a yard sale where someone sells a 1960s egg beater that was handed down from Aunt Martha in order to de-clutter their home and an antique store that sells the same 1960s egg beater as a piece of history?  I'm wondering if there is a disconnect between what scholars study as "material culture" and what the public will accept as worthy for study as "material culture."