Prerequisites

This course is intended for students with a serious interest in methodologies, particularly as they relate to architectural history, historic preservation, and visualization. The course is open to all graduate students in architecture, planning, preservation, landscape architecture, interior design, art history, history, classics, and related fields. This course is required for all entering students in the MA history/theory program, and is available for students who have completed a series of survey courses in the history of architecture or equivalent preparation. Permission of instructor is required and enrollment is limited. Qualified undergraduates encouraged and may enroll with instructor's permission.

Course Format

This course intends to explore basic models for the writing and research of architectural history and related fields. Discussions will include the evolution of the discipline of architectural history, intellectual lineages, major theories of history, and methodological models relevant to individual students' academic research. Readings and critiques of basic textual models will be supplemented with frequent, relatively short writing and research assignments. Students will also make brief in-class presentations of research individually or in groups. One longer research paper is due before the end of the semester. The topic will be selected in consultation with the instructor, and a bibliography of each topic will be formulated through individual tutorials during office hours. Extensive use will be made of the University's resources, including the Architectural Drawings Collection of the Architecture Library, the holdings of the Fine Arts Library and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

Educational Objectives

To develop critical thinking and writing in analyzing both buildings and texts about buildings; to develop familiarity with fundamental problems in the history of ideas as they appear in the history of architecture; to develop methods of investigation that have general applicability; and to develop familiarity with primary sources of research. Participation in class discussion is an essential part of the course.

Evaluation

Grades will be based on short papers (one-third), class participation and presentation of research (one-third), and a final paper (one-third).

Texts

Most articles will be Electronic Reserve. Books will be on reserve in the Architecture Library. The following books are also recommended for purchase:

• Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. An Introduction. 2nd. Ed. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. ISBN: 081661251X. ppbk,
• Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1982. ISBN: 0300032404. ppbk.
• Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, eds. Critical Terms for Art History. 2nd. Ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 0226571688. ppbk.