Public History of the Built Environment: Theory and Practice

This seminar is required for students wishing to concentrate on the Public History of the Built Environment while pursuing an MS in Historic Preservation. It builds on skills developed in HSPV 5210 (American Architecture), HSPV 6000 (Documentation), and HSPV 6060 (Site Management); only HSPV 6000 is a prerequisite. Unlike many public history courses, this one focuses on interpretation of the built environment. While proficiency in archival research is required, an understanding of form and chronology in American architecture is helpful. Fundamentally, this course is about community, memory, and their relationship to built form. As such, it examines oral history methodology and includes readings in sociology and ethnography. It acknowledges that while buildings and landscapes are in one sense simply larger forms of material culture than furniture or other movable objects, they also "work" differently by dint of being inhabited, occupied, and publicly encountered, forming de facto frameworks for private and public life. More than other courses, this one grapples with interpretation and dissemination- everything from signage and monuments to websites and exhibits. It is not, however, a tutorial in the use of those media so much as a chance to reflect critically on their strengths and weaknesses in different contexts.

The Spring 2024 seminar will focus on the “villa” as building and life-style in the antebellum United States, in order to grapple with the ways in which individuals, communities, and nations remember and forget. As the quotes above indicate, these buildings have a complex and often problematic history—many survive to the present as historic sites yet are still inadequately or uncritically documented and interpreted. Our aim is to explore how villas, and their landscapes, function in one sense as large-scale material culture objects, while they also work differently than smaller artifacts and collections to form frameworks and focal points for public and private life. The seminar foregrounds interpretation and dissemination through multiple media – everything from signage and monuments to websites and exhibits. It is not, however, an introduction to the technical aspects of those media but a chance to reflect critically on their strengths and weaknesses in different contexts.

In addition to discussing readings in history, historic preservation, sociology, anthropology, geography, public art, and material culture, students will select a single villa property and develop a rigorously-researched interpretive plan for that property that incorporates current approaches to public history and historiography.