Material. Culture. Now.

Josh's post got me thinking: Where did I first encounter "material culture?" Maybe we could share our individual introductions to material culture and from there we might move toward a common understanding of the concept (and possibly a definition?). My first experience with material culture came before I had heard of the term. I took a course entitled "The Automobile in America" as an undergraduate. The entire premise of the course was to take an object, the car, and use it as a lens through which to examine American history. It was wonderful (and I'm not really that into cars). I was one of the only non-engineering students in the class (and the rest of the university, for that matter). I learned a lot in that course, but most of all I learned that objects connect people. Things have the ability speak to people across disciplines, regions, class, time, etc. I later had a meeting with the professor from the "Automobile" class and I told him I was really interested in "stuff" and how it affected/reflected the people who used and/or made it. Then he said, "Yeah, material culture" and the cartoon light bulb over my head lit up. And here I am.
Also, in thinking about defining material culture, it seems that what it is now might differ from how material culture was understood in the past. As Josh indicated, scholars still seem to be defining it. I was in the Winterthur student lounge today, and someone had placed the program graphics for the Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars as the background on one of the computers. The symposium was titled: "Material. Culture. Now." This title seems to indicate that there is a difference between the field now and the field "then." But has material ever truly been defined? Has its appeal come from its ability to defy a singular definition? One publication that outlines a history of the concept's use is the introduction to "American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field" edited by Ann Smart Martin and Ritchie Garrison in 1997. I don't know if everyone is familiar with this work, but it might help to understand where the field of material culture has been.
But where is it going?