Sandy Isenstadt

The degree to which shopping, or, more broadly, consumerism, is both critiqued and defended in American society confirms the role that commercial goods play in our daily lives. This collection of essays provides case studies depicting selected aspects of this engaging activity.

Elusive Archives asks how historians, librarians, and museum professionals can bring together scattered, lost, or otherwise forgotten objects into a provisional collection, an elusive archive.  Addressing a wide range of objects, the authors’ diverse approaches, varying formats, and wide scope of inquiries describe a new conceptual territory at the intersection of archival studies and material culture studies.