I teach a variety of classes for students of historic preservation–both those who want to major in the discipline and also students who are just interested in looking more deeply at the world around them.
HISP 105 The American Built Environment
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This course introduces the principles of historic preservation through the study of sites, structures, buildings, and landscapes; and, by using the analytical tools of history, architectural history, and archaeology. The course primarily emphasizes architecture and the built environment. Through readings, lectures, slide presentations, and field observation of historic resources, the course helps students understand the history, development and cultural context of the American heritage that historic preservation seeks to identify, interpret, and protect.
HISP 205 Documentation and Field Work
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This course introduces the student in historic preservation to fundamentals associated with documentation and fieldwork. These fundamentals include archival research, measured drawings, and digital photography. Competency in these fundamentals will be produced through lectures, on-site investigations, use of the public archives, and through the use of a variety of equipment associated with the discipline. These skill sets will enable students to better visually document objects, landscapes, and historic structures as well as to better understand chronological developments, construction techniques, building materials, and stylistic details.
HISP 325 Vernacular Architecture in America
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This course is a seminar that explores the theoretical and methodological approaches used when studying the built environment as a product of vernacular design processes. Commonplace buildings are investigated as complex historical resources that can be read for information about intentions, attitudes, and needs of past generations. Ultimately any architecture can be studied as vernacular and it is an approach, rather than a delineation of subject matter, that distinguishes vernacular architectural research.
Through readings, lectures, field documentation, research, and in-depth discussion, this course explores the interdisciplinary investigation of buildings.
