Constellations: HAA 2532 Early American Architecture
Architecture often serves as a prime document and indicator of America's past and future. The theme of this course is the search for identity in American architecture in the centuries from the colonial settlements to the Civil War. The course studies both the recorded history of American architecture and the unrecorded millennium before that, to show its surprising cohesion in the face of great cultural and territorial diversity. The first part of the course particularly stresses archaeological evidence and historic preservation; throughout the course the instructor and the students will together be reading the buildings both for their own visual pleasures and as documents of American society.
