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Assignments/Events Examinations Holidays

ART HISTORY 457: HISTORY OF AMERICAN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE & LANDSCAPES

LECTURE CALENDER

UNIT 1: PRELIMINARIES TO STUDYING VERNACULAR SPACES

WEEK 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION

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1/22 (Tu): Course Introduction; Getting Acquainted
1/24 (Th): Discussion: What is vernacular architecture/landscape & how do we study it?
Read:
  • Camille Wells: “Old Claims and New Demands: Vernacular Architecture Studies Today,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 2 (1986): 1-4.
  • Henry Glassie, Excerpt on “Vernacular Architecture,” from Material Culture (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1999), 227-31.
  • Dell Upton, “The VAF at 25: What Now?” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13, No. 2 (2007): 7-13.
  • Peirce F. Lewis, “Axioms for Reading the Landscape: Some Guides to the American Scene,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. D.W. Meinig (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 11-32.
  • Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes ed. Paul Groth & Todd Bressi (New Haven & London: Yale, 1997): 1-21.

WEEK 2: VERNACULAR 101

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1/29 (Tu): Lecture: Anatomy of Vernacular Buildings and Landscape
Read:
  • Gabrielle Lanier & Bernard L. Herman, “Introduction” in Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 1-7 (textbook).
  • REVIEW diagrams in READER & familiarize with vocabulary.
  • Review FIELD FORM – WisDOT.
1/31 (Th): Lecture and Discussion: Field Documentation of Historic Buildings & Landscapes

Assignment: *Before coming to class try to fill out both pages of the FIELD FORM (WisDOT) for the building you live in – be prepared to discuss!

Read:
  • Lanier & Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 316-40.
  • REVIEW the “Guide to Formal Analysis of Buildings & Landscapes” (READER)
  • Review HALS guidelines (.pdf file)

WEEK 3: BUILDING MATERIALS & TECHNOLOGIES

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2/5 (Tu): Lecture: Building in Wood, Earth, & Stone
Read:
  • Lanier and Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 61-118.
2/7 (Th): Discussion: Using Building Technologies/Materials to Plot Cultural Process
Read:
  • Fred Kniffen, “Folk Housing: Key to Diffusion,” in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture (1986), 3-26.
  • Fred Kniffen and Henry Glassie, “Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective” in Common Places, 159-81.
  • William H. Tishler, “Stovewood Architecture,” Landscape 23 (1979): 28-31.

WEEK 4: MATTERS OF “STYLE” IN VERNACULAR BUILDINGS

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2/12 (Tu): Lecture: The Parade of Styles & its Limitations
Read:
  • Lanier and Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 119-76.
2/14 (Th): Discussion: Alternative Ways for Understanding “Style” in Vernacular Environments
Read:
  • Dell Upton, “Holy Things & Profane,” from Holy Things & Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia (1986), 101-62.
  • Edward Chappell, “Looking at Buildings,” Fresh Advices (November 1984), i-vi.

UNIT 2: READING TYPES & FORMS OF VERNACULAR BUILDINGS & LANDSCAPES

WEEK 5: DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENTS I

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2/19 (Tu): QUIZ #1; Lecture: Vernacular House Forms through the Civil War [Study Images]
Read:
  • Lanier & Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 10-45, 51-60.
2/21 (Th): Lecture, cont.; Discussion: The Generation of Domestic Forms
Assignment: *Must submit 1st précis by this date [Guidelines]
Read:
  • Thomas Hubka, “Just Folks Designing: Vernacular Designers & the Generation of Form,” Common Places (1986), 426-32.
  • J. Ritchie Garrison, “Carpentry in Northfield, Massachusetts: The Domestic Architecture of Calvin Stearns and Sons, 1799-1856,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, IV, ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press), 9-22.

WEEK 6: DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENTS II

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2/26 (Tu): Lecture: Vernacular Housing AFTER the Civil War
Read:
  • Lanier & Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 45-59.
2/28 (Th): Discussion: Houses & Popular Culture
Read:
  • James Garvin, “Mail Order House Plans & American Victorian Architecture,” Winterthur Portfolio 16 (1981): 309-334.
  • Gwendolyn Wright, “The Progressive Housewife & the Bungalow,” from Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (1981), 158-76.
  • Pam Simpson, “Stone for the Masses: Concrete Block in the Early Twentieth Century,” from Cheap, Quick & Easy: Imitative Architectural Materials, 1870-1930 (1999), 9-29.

WEEK 7: THE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE

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3/4 (Tu): Lecture: The Farm Landscape
Read:
  • Lanier and Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 177-225.
3/6 (Th): Lecture/Discussion: The Farm Landscape, CONT.
Read:
  • Allen G. Noble & Hubert G.H. Wilhelm, “The Farm Barns of the American Midwest,” from Barns of the Midwest (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995), 1-23.
  • Ingolf Vogeler, “Dairying and Dairy Barns in the Northern Midwest,” in Noble and Wilhelm, Barns of the Midwest, 99-121.
  • Allen G. Noble, “The Diffusion and Evolution of the Silo,” in Wood, Brick, and Stone: The North American Settlement Landscape. Volume 2: Barns and Farm Structures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 69-80.

WEEK 8: VARIETIES OF VERNACULAR FORMS

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3/11 (Tu): Lecture: Variety of Urban Forms
Assignment: *Must submit 2nd précis by this date [Guidelines]
Read:
  • Lanier and Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic, 225-77.
  • Richard Longstreth, “Compositional Types in American Commercial Architecture,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 2 (1986): 12-23.
3/13 (Th): QUIZ #2 [Study Images & Preparation Guidelines]; Lecture: Urban Landscapes, Landscape Ensembles, & the Landscape of the Highway
Read:
  • Dolores Hayden, “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place & the Politics of Space,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, eds. Paul Groth & Todd W. Bressi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 111-33.
  • Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, revised edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), excerpted pages.
  • Wayne Curtis, “Belle Epoxy,” Historic Preservation (May-June 2000): 32-39.
  • Karal Ann Marling, “Tall Tales, Trademarks, and the Great Gatsby: Midwestern Space Defined,” and “The Great American Roadside: Tourist Sculpture in Minnesota,” from The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol along the American Highway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 1-5 & 40-63.
  • Charles G. Zug III, “Folk Art and Outsider Art: A Folklorist’s Perspective,” in The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture, Michael D. Hall & Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr., eds. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 145-60.
  • Michael Kimmelman, “By Whatever Name, Easier to Like,” New York Times (February 17, 1997).

***SPRING BREAK: Saturday, March 15th – Sunday, March 23rd***

WEEK 9: LEARNING FROM THE WI LANDSCAPE

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3/25 (Tu): Introduction to the Landscape of Southwestern WI
Read:
  • Michael P. Conzen, “The European Settling and Transformation of the Upper Mississippi Valley Lead Region,” in Robert C. Ostergren and Thomas R. Vale, eds., Wisconsin Land and Life (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 163-89.
  • John C. Hudson, “The Creation of Towns in Wisconsin,” in Ostergren and Vale, Wisconsin Land and Life, 197-220.
  • Chad David Moffett, “Cheese Factories in the Southwestern Wisconsin Landscape, 1870-1920,” MA Thesis, UW-Madison (2000), 45-61.
  • William H. Tishler, “Built From Tradition: Wisconsin’s Rural Ethnic Folk Architecture,” Wisconsin Academy Review (March 1984): 14-18.
  • Newspaper clippings on some buildings we will visit.
3/27 (Th): NO CLASS – FIELD TRIP ON FRIDAY, MARCH 28TH
Review:
3/28 (F): FIELD TRIP

WEEK 10: POSTWAR SUBURBANIZATION: HOUSES & NEIGHBORHOODS

[Back to Calendar]

4/1 (Tu): Lecture: The Postwar Suburb (from Dream to Reality)
Read:
  • Dolores Hayden, “Sitcom Suburbs,” in Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003), 128-53.
  • Clifford J. Clark, Chapters 7 & 8 of The American Family Home (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1986), 193-236.
4/3 (Th): Discussion: New Interpretations of the Postwar House & Neighborhood
Read:
  • Jamie A. Jacobs, “Social and Spatial Change in the Postwar Family Room,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13 No. 1 (2006/07): 70-85.
  • Dianne Harris, “Clean and Bright and Everyone White: Seeing the Postwar Domestic Environment in the United States,” in Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision, ed. Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press), 241-62.

WEEK 11: UNIVERSITY HILL FARMS: INTRODUCTION

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4/8 (Tu): Guest Lecture on history of Hill Farms by Daina Perkiunas, National Register Coordinator, Wisconsin Historical Society
Read:
  • Daina Perkiunas, “University Hill Farms: A Project for Modern Living,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 89 (Autumn 2005):16-27.
  • Carter/Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture (first half).
4/10 (Th): Meeting with Joe De Rose, Historian, Wisconsin Historical Society on Research in Hill Farms
Assignment: *Field trip paper due no later than today
Read:
  • Carter/Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture (second half).

WEEK 12: RESEARCH WEEK I

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4/15 (Tu): Fieldwork in Hill Farms
4/17 (Th): Fieldwork in Hill Farms

WEEK 13: RESEARCH WEEK II

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4/22 (Tu): Fieldwork in Hill Farms
4/24 (Th): Fieldwork in Hill Farms

WEEK 14: HILL FARMS, CONCLUDED

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4/29 (Tu): Group Meeting with Instructor
5/1 (Th): Group Presentations

WEEK 15: CLOSING THOUGHTS

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5/6 (Tu): Conclusion: The Vernacular Today
5/8 (Th): Meet to submit data gathered in field & project proposal

***THERE IS NO FINAL EXAM FOR THIS COURSE***
Have a great summer!

AH 457 Home Page | Course Description | Précis Guidelines