Spring 2009

ARTS 637
History of Domestic Architecture

Kourelis,Kostis

01/26/2009 - 05/04/2009
Monday 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM

Fisk Hall 115

Domestic form has always captured the cultural imagination. From Adam's house in paradise to Mohammed's house in Medina, from modernism's "machines for living" to postmodernism's "McMansions," houses offer unique evidence in exploring the relationship between pragmatic shelter and social identity. This seminar offers a systematic introduction to the history of domestic architecture. We will learn about primitive huts, the Greek oikos, the Roman domus, the villa, the castle, the palazzo, the mansion, the plantation house and its slave quarters, Victorian suburbs, slums and tenements, bungalows, housing projects, postwar suburbs and post-industrial exburbs. At the same time, we will investigate how the discourse over physical form constructed social notions of dwelling and philosophical notions of being. We will read selected texts from literature, religion, philosophy, psychology, and sociology to illuminate the fundamental role that huts, houses, and hoods have played in shaping cultural history.

Sources to be studied include house architecture, and primarily and secondary literature related to the history of domestic architecture from antiquity to the present.

Grades will be based on written assignments, midterm and exam, and class participation.

This course is open to auditors.

A syllabus for this course is available at:
Course Syllabus


Kostis Kourelis (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is assistant professor of art history at Clemson University. Click here for more information about Kostis Kourelis.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 18

Texts to purchase for this course:
Virginia and Lee McAlester, A FIELD GUIDE TO AMERICAN HOUSES (Knopf), Paperback

Gwendolyn Wright, BUILDING THE DREAM: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF HOUSING IN AMERICA (The MIT Press), Paperback

READING MATERIALS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 BROAD STREET, MIDDLETOWN, 860-685-7323 Order your books online

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