Core BLC courses

Fieldwork is the primary mode of knowledge production and dissemination in Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures (see Kinds of Fieldwork for BLC). Both of the core courses listed below feature research, teaching and learning centered on fieldwork. In addition, the two campuses offer a variety of alternative field study opportunities including study abroad, field studio, and service learning classes. Students enrolled in Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures pursue their specific interests through classes in a diverse range of fields. Coursework in BLC includes theories and methods rooted in architecture and planning, material culture, art history, political and cultural geography, environmental history, public history, urban and architectural history and theory, cultural landscape studies, cultural anthropology, social history and the humanities. See the lists of additional courses at Madison and Milwaukee available to Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures students.

METHODS IN 
BUILDINGS-LANDSCAPES-CULTURES

The BLC Common Course engages graduate students who actively interrogate the material and geographical world around us. Participants will critically examine methods of studying the everyday built environment, which includes ordinary buildings, cultural landscapes, and material objects. Students will analyze and compare a wide array of theories and methodological approaches from the last four decades including the work of scholars from art history, geography, landscape history, environmental history, urban studies, literature, historical archaeology, material culture studies, and folklore. Discussions encourage students to explore the intellectual boundaries of these overlapping academic disciplines while also cultivating their own identities in their chosen fields of study. 

The materiality of our evidence is not abstract in this class, but rather the basis for our projects. Each year, students conduct fieldwork in and out of class in a different neighborhood, town, region, or designated place. On-the-ground investigations include making measured drawings of floorplans and elevations, neighborhood mapping, GIS production and analysis, and photographic methods of documentation, as well as recording and considering texts like letters and newspapers, historic sound and foodscapes, interior furnishings, oral histories, and interviews. Final projects contribute to the BLC’s on-going online documentation projects.

For sample syllabi see the Syllabus Exchange

SUMMER FIELD SCHOOL

The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school is offered every summer. Students, invited experts, scholars, and neighborhood affiliates work with residents and community organizations in order to explore, document, and examine historic buildings and cultural landscapes of a selected neighborhood. They create site reports that become part of the historical record of Wisconsin and part of BLC's on-going online documentation projects. They engage local residents in art, storytelling, and oral history projects.  They produce an inventory of sites that have historical value to the selected neighborhood and provide users with interpretive ways of reading these sites. We expect summer field schools to increase awareness of neighborhood history and preservation of the built environment. Students receive an immersive experience in the field recording of the built environment and cultural landscapes and they get an opportunity to write history literally “from the ground up.” They receive training in site documentation (including photography, measured drawings, digital documentation, audio-visual production), historic interpretation of buildings and landscapes (focusing on how to “read” buildings within its material, political, social, cultural and economic contexts), and primary source research (including oral history, archival research, architectural analysis). 

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