TWO LECTURES

"Does Williamsburg Still Matter? 
Preservation and Storytelling in the 21st Century" 
Free Lecture by Jeff Klee, Architectural Historian – Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Friday, June 14, 2013 
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Place: Villa Terrace Museum, 2220 N. Terrace Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53202

"Messin' in the Kitchen": New Possibilities for Community Public/Oral History in the Digital Age” Free Lecture by Michael H. Frisch, Professor of American Studies and History and Senior Research Scholar at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo

Tuesday June 18, 2013. 6:30-8:30PM 

Place: 2650 N. Wahl Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53211 (North Point Lighthouse)
Both events are free and open to the public 

BLC students will present at the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting

We will be there in full strength at the AFS 2013 Annual Meeting

Yuko Nakamura (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Identifying "Common" Places as Cultural Resources: An Experimental Study on the Transmission of People's Systems to Evaluate Vernacular Places

Sustainable Models: Case Studies and Perspectives on Field Schools Sponsored by the Public Programs Section Section
Guha Shankar (American Folklife Center), chair
Meghann E. Jack (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Gerald Pocius (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Arijit Sen (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Kim Stryker (George Mason University), Chelsea Wait (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

BLC Field School wins national award

Picturing Milwaukee: Thurston Woods Pilot Study, the 2012 BLC Field School directed by Arijit Sen received the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)  2013 Award of Merit.

The Award of Merit is presented to recognize excellence for projects (including civic engagement, special projects, educational programs, exhibits, publications, restoration projects, etc.), individual achievement, and organizational general excellence.

Sen will receive the award on behalf of the field school participants on Friday, September 20, 2013 at the AASLH annual meeting in Birmingham, AL. The 2013 BLC Field School will be held at the Historic Water Tower Neighborhood.

News from BLC Madison

The Department of Art History is pleased to announce that longtime affiliate, Prof. Preeti Chopra will join the department starting in the fall semester.   A graduate of the School of Architecture at Ahmedabad, India, and the University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Chopra’s research and teaching focus on architecture, landscape and urbanism in colonial and post-colonial India.  She will teach AH372, Cities of Asia, in the fall semester. 

The Department will also gain new strength in the broader field of Islamic art, architecture, material and visual culture starting in the fall semester.  Dr. Jennifer Pruitt has accepted a tenure-track position funded by the Mellon Initiative for the Humanities.  Currently a lecturer at Smith College, in Northampton Massachusetts, Jennifer Pruitt received her A.B. magna cum laude from Smith College, and her Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University.  Her research focuses on the architecture and material culture of the Islamic Middle East with particular focus on Fatimid Cairo in the tenth and eleventh centuries.  She also has research interests in Islamic ceramics and contemporary street art associated with the Arab Spring in Egypt. She will teach an introductory History of Islamic art and architecture (AH600 taught at 300-level) in the fall semester.

New Courses for Fall 2013

Animals in Contemporary Culture
Instructor: Lane Hall
Course: 722 Special Topics in Contemporary Culture: Animals in Contemporary Culture
Th  6:00 p.m. - 8:40 PM, Curtin  939
We will explore how animals are represented within contemporary Western culture through the analysis of theoretical texts, movies, literature and visual art. Reflecting more broadly upon the role of nature within culture, we will also look at institutions dedicated to animals, such as pet shops, zoos and natural history museums, and seek to gain a better understanding of our complex relationship with the animal, and ultimately, what it means to be human.

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History 700: Introduction to Public History
Instructor: Jasmine Alinder
M 4-6:30 PM
3 credtis
Instead of history that is written by and for academics, public history focuses on popular understandings of the past. From museums and monuments to textbooks and documentary film, forms of public history reveal as well as conceal the tensions involved in codifying historical events on local, national, and global levels. This course will introduce students to different debates and practices in the field of public history. Class discussion will often address the following questions: Why is the presentation of history for the public often such a controversial enterprise? How do people use history for their own ends? What role does visual culture play in the portrayal of the past? 

Contact Information (for further information)
USP:     414-229-4751     NWQ 5498 (Bldg B, take red elevators to 5th floor) 

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URB STD-971: Seminar on the History of American Urban Problems (3 units)

This course examines how historians understand urban problems and how historians produce scholarship. By reading and discussing several examples of historical scholarship, students will prepare to write research papers and present their findings to others in the class. Scaffolded assignments build toward the production of a 15-20 page, archivally based research paper. Students enrolling in this course should be aware that assignments require significant time in the UWM Archives, whose business hours are limited. Urban Studies students enrolled in this course should plan to present their papers at the USP Student Forum in the Spring of 2014. GER Units Section Class# Hours Days Dates Instructor Room Syllabus 3 SEM 001 39771 4:00 PM-6:40 PM T 09/03-12/12 Seligman, Amanda HLT 341  PDF

For More information contact Amanda I Seligman at seligman@uwm.edu or Urban Studies Programs, 229-4751.

History of American Vernacular Architecture and Landscapes

Instructor; Anna Andrzejewski

MWF 11:00-11:50 | L150 Elvehjem Building, UW-Madison

This upper-level undergraduate/graduate course examines an array of American vernacular buildings and landscapes from the colonial period to the present to consider what they can tell us about the past (and potentially the present).  As a course on "vernacular," it encompasses the ordinary or everyday spaces and places that people encounter daily (houses, workspaces, institutional buildings) but rarely think about critically.  Because these environments often were (and are) ordinary (that is, not high-style, not designed by architects, landscape architects, professional designers, etc.), traditional art historical frameworks that focus on stylistic categories or maker's biographies prove rather ineffective in interpreting them. Thus, this course will look at recent work by scholars from the fields of anthropology, history, American studies, cultural geography, landscape architecture and history, folklore, and material culture to construct frameworks that help us understand the significance that vernacular environments have had for their makers and users.  In so doing, we will also consider question the need for the category of “vernacular,” as the approaches we discuss may be brought to bear upon any aspect of the built environment.  

Attendance at lectures and discussions is expected, and the reading load for this course is heavy.  There will be several short writing assignments and quizzes. A all-day field trip to the rural landscapes of southwestern Wisconsin and field projects in Madison are required as part of the course, as are visits by noted scholars of Wisconsin vernacular architecture and landscapes.

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Art History 701, Practicum in Art History: Bibliography, Historiography

Instructor: Anna Andrzejewski

W 1:30-3:30 in L170, Elvehjem Building

The Art History Department offers Art History 701, Practicum in Art History: Bibliography, Historiography, Methods every fall. This course is intended as a course for those interested in methods of art historical research. Although required of incoming graduate students in the Department of Art History, the course is open to students in related departments who may utilize art historical methods, particularly qualitative ones, in their research.  It is particularly appropriate for students in fields such as Design Studies, Material Culture, Anthropology, History, Geography, and Landscape Architecture (students in these programs have taken it in the past).

For more information on the course and a sample syllabus, please contact Anna Andrzejewski, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, at avandrzejews@wisc.edu.(Andrzejewski | W 1:30-3:30 | L170 Elvehjem Building)

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ART HISTORY 600, History of Islamic Art and Architecture.

Instructor, Jennifer Pruitt, Assistant Professor

Mondays/Wednesdays, 2:30-3:45

This course surveys the architecture, landscape, book arts, and luxury objects produced in Islamic contexts from Spain to India from the 7th through the 21st centuries. Attention will be focused upon the relationships between Islamic visual idioms and localized religious, political, and socioeconomic circumstances. In particular, lectures and readings will examine the vital roles played by theology, royal patronage, ceremonies, gift exchange, trade, and workshop practices in the formulation of visual traditions.

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ART HISTORY 430, Topics in Visual Culture: Calligraphy to Graffiti: Art and Popular Culture in the Islamic World

Instructor, Amanda Rodgers, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities

Tu-Th, 2:30-3:45

This course is an introduction to Islamic arts and popular culture in contemporary context(s), as well as to diverse experiences and practices of Muslims around the world. It teaches students to assess their current assumptions about Islam and to think critically about representations of Islam and Muslims in the media, particularly in a post-Arab Spring world. This course allows students to engage critical and relevant questions, such as: What is Islam’s relationship with visual culture and the art world? Is Islam hostile to images? Can we speak of a single “Islamic” art. By the end of this course, each student will be able to:

Demonstrate basic knowledge of the beliefs and practices of Islam

Demonstrate knowledge of the historical context in which Islam developed in various regions

Demonstrate knowledge of the multiple meanings of Islamic art among diverse groups and cultures outside the Arab world

Demonstrate knowledge of the multiple meanings of Islamic art and practice for Muslim women

Write and speak thoughtfully and critically about issues and concerns relevant to Muslims and the art world

Demonstrate knowledge of historical and contemporary religious debates relevant to a wide variety of artistic practice

Think critically and freely about portrayals of Islam and Muslims in the media

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Course Number; ARTHIST 370
Instructor: Professor Jennifer Johung
Classroom: MIT 195, Tues/Thurs: 12:30 PM-1:45 PM
Credits: 3
Description: This course examines current trends in architectural practice, focusing on the materiality and temporality of organic, animate, portable, interactive, sustainable and bio-mimetic structures within performative, digital, and virtual architectures.  Today, buildings are no longer only conceived as objects, but are designed and constructed according to what they do on site or how they perform in response to their users’ needs.  Through a selection of contemporary case studies, we will explore a building’s flexible relationship to its physical or digital environment while analyzing its bodily-like movement and responsiveness to both real and virtual users.
Contact Info: johung@uwm.edu

The Urban Edge Symposium, April 5, 2013

Urban Edge Symposium

Friday, April 5, 2013

The 2013 Urban Edge award event will be a symposium titled Evolutionary Infrastructure / Evolving Practices curated by Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss ofWEISS/MANFREDI. Expanding the definition of ‘infrastructure’ to address an escalating set of design challenges that are at once cultural, architectural, and environmental, the symposium will host a series of cross-disciplinary talks and discussions between innovative architects, artists, ecologists, engineers, and theoreticians. 

Symposium Schedule

INTRODUCTIONS

10:00am, AUP170

Dean Robert Greenstreet

Chair Jim Wasley

REPOSITIONING INFRASTRUCTURE

10:30am, AUP170

Eric Bunge

Paul Mankiewicz

Anuradha Mathur

Mahadev Raman

Grace La (respondent)

INFRASTRUCTURE :UNSEEN FUTURES

2:00pm, AUP170

David van der Leer

Mary Miss

Keller Easterling

Kyle Reynolds (respondent)

EVOLUTIONARY INFRASTRUCTURE KEYNOTE LECTURE

4:30PM, ENGELMANN105

Michael A. Manfredi and Marion Weiss

Faculty Contact

Karl Wallick is coordinating this event. For more information, please contact him atwallick@uwm.edu

All events are occurring at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. The architecture building [AUP] is located at the corner of Maryland and Hartford. Panel sessions will occur in the ground floor auditorium [AUP170]. The final keynote lecture will take place in the Engelmann auditorium which is right next door to the architecture building. This event is free and open to the public.

Riverine Conversations and Contested Ecologies

Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures has organized the following upcoming events in co-sponsorship with the Center for 21st Century Studies, & UWM's Department of English & Comparative Literature.

The FIRST Brown Bag Lunch event entitled "Riverine Conversations" is scheduled on Thursday, April 4th 2013
(SARUP Resource Center Room. 146, 12.00 noon to 1:30 PM, cookies included).

The SECOND Symposium event entitled "Contested Ecologies" is scheduled on Friday, April 5th 2013
(Curtin Hall 175, 12.00 noon to 5:30 PM, reception follows).

Both events are free and open to the public.

http://www4.uwm.edu/c21/pages/events/abstracts/13spring/contested.html

New Spring 2013 Courses

ARTHIST 760: Alive: Art, Architecture, Performance
Mondays, 2-4:40 pm, Mitchel 158
Professor Jennifer Johung, johung@uwm.edu

Anthropology 940: Seminar in Cultural Anthropology

"Global Crises, Critical Theory and Engaged Anthropology"

Tuesday, 5:30-8:10 pm, Sabin Hall 281, UWM

Professor Tracey Heatherington

Geography 934:  Seminar in Urban Geography

Topic: Exploring Neoliberalization, Collaborative Governance and Citizen Participation

Thursday, 2.30 pm to 5.10 pm,  Bolton Hall 487, UWM

Professor Rina Ghose, rghose@uwm.edu

History 940: "Mass Media in World History" 

4:00 PM-6:40 PM, MER G47, UWM
Professor Christine Evans

ARCH 531-001: HISTORIC CONCEPTS OF ARCHITECTURE (19th Century Architectureand Urban Design Theory)
Mondays 5:30-8:10PM, AUP 183
Professor Linda Krause, lrkrause@uwm.edu

LA 677: "Cultural Resource Preservation & Landscape History"/Folklore 530 "Cultural Landscape Conservation" (3 cr.)
Mon, Wed. 2:30-3:45, Ag Hall Room 14Professor Janet C. Gilmore, Landscape Architecture, Comparative Literature; Folklore Studies, jgilmore@wisc.edu

METHODS IN AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE: MATERIAL CULTURE OF MADISON

Art History 563 (SPRING 2013)

TUESDAYS, 2:00-4:00

Prof. Anna Andrzejewski, avandrzejews@wisc.edu