Dean Lampros

Lecturer - History Phil Social Sciences
Image
head shot of Dean Lampros
BA, University of Pennsylvania
MA, Boston University
PHD, Boston University

Dean Lampros teaches cultural history and American Studies at RISD. His current research explores symbolic colonization and the way landscapes, both permanent and impermanent, were used to rewrite history and bolster the ruling elite’s claims to authority in 20th-century New England. His broader interests include intersections between vernacular architecture, material culture, popular culture, mass consumption, race and ethnicity, queerness, politics and historic preservation.

He has contributed chapters to Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling (Routledge, 2013) and Modernism and American Mid-20th Century Sacred Architecture (Routledge, 2018). His first book, Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) uses the previously untold history of an American icon to explore the 20th century’s expanding consumer landscape, hotly contested and rapidly changing interwar neighborhoods and the ways we use the built environment to construct our identities and tell our stories.

Courses

Wintersession 2025 Courses

HPSS S241-101 - FROM THE MODEL T AND THE SUV TO THE TESLA MODEL 3: THE CAR AND THE WORLD IT MADE
Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Wintersession 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

HPSS S241-101

FROM THE MODEL T AND THE SUV TO THE TESLA MODEL 3: THE CAR AND THE WORLD IT MADE

Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Wintersession 2025
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-01-03 to 2025-02-06
Times: TH | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/30/2025 - 01/30/2025; M | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 02/03/2025 - 02/03/2025; W | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 02/05/2025 - 02/05/2025; TH | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 02/06/2025 - 02/06/2025; M | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/06/2025 - 01/06/2025; W | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/08/2025 - 01/08/2025; TH | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/09/2025 - 01/09/2025; M | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/13/2025 - 01/13/2025; TH | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/16/2025 - 01/16/2025; W | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/22/2025 - 01/22/2025; TH | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/23/2025 - 01/23/2025; M | 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM | 01/27/2025 - 01/27/2025 Instructor(s): Dean Lampros Location(s): College Building, Room 442 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

It was an American automobile maker, Henry Ford, who invented the assembly line. When he decided to pay his workers a five-dollar-a-day wage, he also invented America's middle class, by providing a wage that allowed autoworkers to enter the ranks of the nation's consumers. Cars have come a long way since those first Model T's rolled off of Ford's assembly line. Through their ever-changing styles, from the streamlined interwar years to the tailfins of the postwar years, we can trace both the evolution of American modernism and its connection to Cold War politics and ambivalence towards the Atomic Age. More compact designs and an emphasis on fuel economy heralded an era of increased foreign competition. For more than a century, the auto industry's need for petroleum and rubber has fueled American imperialism in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. From coast to coast cars created a new cultural landscape, one filled with highways, suburbs, shopping malls, police, and roadside oddities. Throughout its long history, the car has been a shifting symbol of innovation, prosperity, consumerism, and the American Dream; youth culture, rebellion, and sex; both liberation and oppression for women, people of color, and immigrants; and, more recently, environmental degradation, deindustrialization, the decline of labor unions, and America's struggle to compete in an increasingly globalized economy. Now, in the twenty-first century, the rise of Uber and ride-sharing, the advent of self-driving vehicles, a renewed emphasis on public transportation and walkability, and an entire generation that appears uninterested in driving, one cannot help but wonder whether we are witnessing the end of America's long love affair with the open road.

Elective

Spring 2025 Courses

HPSS S494-01 - BUYING THE AMERICAN DREAM: AMERICAN CONSUMER CULTURE
Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

HPSS S494-01

BUYING THE AMERICAN DREAM: AMERICAN CONSUMER CULTURE

Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: MW | 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM Instructor(s): Dean Lampros Location(s): Washington Place, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

The health of the American economy and, at times, the strength of our spirit as a people are measured by how much we spend on consumer goods. Both individually and collectively, we are defined not only by what we purchase, but by the act of shopping itself. How did we become a nation of citizen consumers? What drives consumer demand? Already in the late 19th century, middle-class values were shifting from thrift to indulgence, though we remained a producer nation for much of the 20th century. Nonetheless, the steady decline of manufacturing in the United States and the outsourcing of production in an increasingly globalized context have done little to cool our love affair with consumer goods. Using an interdisciplinary American Studies approach that explores the intersections of history, politics, material culture, gender and sexuality, class, race, religion, immigration and ethnicity, and the built environment, this course examines the nature and expansion of mass consumption, the democratization of desire, the meanings attached to consumer goods and the act of spending, the role of technology and advertising, and the impact of mass consumption upon the built environment. We will investigate consumption patterns over time among women, people of color, immigrants and their descendants, sexual minorities, and youth. Studies of consumption within ethnic communities, in particular, suggest the creation of transnational identities. As a result, we will also explore globalized consumer products and patterns. Finally, the course will look at the various kinds of controls to which American consumerism has been subjected.

Elective

HPSS S252-01 - THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH
Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

HPSS S252-01

THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH

Level Undergraduate
Unit History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences
Subject History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Period Spring 2025
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2025-02-13 to 2025-05-23
Times: MW | 9:40 AM - 11:10 AM Instructor(s): Dean Lampros Location(s): Washington Place, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

How we die says as much about us as how we live. As a result, much can be learned by exploring America's changing attitudes toward death and dying, funeral rites, burial practices, and mourning rituals. Part personal tragedy, part communal experience, and part political event, our individual and collective responses to death should be treated as socially constructed artifacts, offering valuable insight into complex cultural, historical, and socio-economic forces. Buried within the American way of death are clues to understanding how this nation's physical, spiritual, economic, scientific, and political landscapes have changed over time. Rituals and practices surrounding death reflect the realities of class conflict, gender politics, race relations, and an increasingly diverse population. So often, deathcare has often been at the forefront of major cultural shifts and national debates over who belongs here, the role of government, the shape of our cities and towns, patterns of consumption, and, more recently, the future of our planet. Growing interest in green burials suggests not only a burgeoning concern with the carbon footprint of human remains, but shifting ideas about our individual legacies and what we leave behind. A discussion-based course, student engagement and active participation are key. Each student will be required to select a portion of the assigned reading to present to the class. In addition, students will work in small groups to craft a 20-minute oral presentation that examines and contextualizes the funeralization practices of a particular segment of the American people. Finally, each student will complete a 5 - 7 page research paper using a combination of primary and secondary sources (to be approved by the instructor) that elucidate and interrogate a specific aspect of the American way of death.

Elective

Image
head shot of Dean Lampros
BA, University of Pennsylvania
MA, Boston University
PHD, Boston University