Now Taking Applications for BLC Summer Field School 2015

Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School
Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Class Dates: June 8 - July 10, 2015; Final exhibit: July 24, 2015
Preparatory Workshop (attendance required), June 1, 2015, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Room 191, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UWM

You will need to apply in order to be admitted. We will be accepting a maximum of 15 students.  You may take a maximum of 6 credits. Choose from the list below.

ARCH 190 Special Topics: Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School. –3 cr.
ARCH 534 Field Study. –3 cr.
ARCH 561 Measured Drawing for Architects. –3 cr.
ARCH 562 Preservation Technology Laboratory. –3 cr.
Arch 391/791: Independent studies for undergraduate/graduate students. –3 cr.

This summer course provides students an immersion experience in the field recording of the built environment and cultural landscapes and an opportunity to learn how to write history literally “from the ground up.” The 2015 field school focuses on Washington Park, a racially, economically and culturally diverse neighborhood known for its artist communities and active neighborhood groups. A recent influx of Somali and Burmese refugees has added to an existing diverse group of white, African American and Hmong residents. This summer we will study a variety of homes in this neighborhood—everyday residences, boarded up homes, refabricated and reused homes, homes transformed into stores and workplaces, homes as works of art, homes remembered in family histories and homes as domestic worlds. As cultural resources, saturated with diverse values, memories, stories and imaginations, our homes matter, because they represent how we feel about our community and how we value our environment. This project seeks to employ the enduring creativity of storytelling, the power of digital humanities, and depth of local knowledge in order to galvanize Milwaukee residents to talk about their homes as repositories of community memory, spaces of caring and markers of civic pride.

Nationally recognized faculty directing portions of this school include Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Anna Andrzejewski, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael H. Frisch, Professor and Senior Research Scholar, University at Buffalo, Jasmine Alinder, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Steve Wetzel, Assistant Professor of Film, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Arijit Sen, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Matthew Jarosz, Associate Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Historic Preservation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

For more information or for a copy of an application form, please contact Prof. Arijit Sen at senA@uwm.edu or go to http://www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com.​​