Course Information

Prof. Jorge Otero-Pailos
TA: Leslie Klein

Office hours:
Mondays 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, or by appointment (jo2050@columbia.edu). Please sign up on the sheet outside of Buell 307 door at least 24hrs in advance.

Objectives:
This course is a survey of architecture built in what is now the United States of America from pre-historic times to 1876. It is designed to help develop your competence in identifying, understanding, and analyzing historic structures, their types and styles. The intention is to make you proficient in the use of the methodological, historiographical, visual, and intellectual tools necessary to grasp fully the meanings of historic buildings in their various contexts.

Method:
In each class, we will examine the conditions of possibility for the emergence of private houses, public buildings, landscapes, parks, settlements, towns, and cities. That is, we will ask how it was that this particular structure came into existence here (in the United States and not there), at that precise time. To answer these questions we will study the history of built form in the context of the intellectual, political, technological, cultural, social, and natural events that made it possible.
We will pay close attention to those projects which “overshot” the accepted conventions of their times. For instance, we will look at how aspects of Native American structures (such as their mythical meanings) often escaped the conceptual analytical devices of European observers. Insofar as they challenged established norms, we will study the function of these buildings in advancing new ways of making and of thinking –especially those that we might consider “American.”
Lastly, this course will ask you to consider your own position and that of the historians writing about the buildings you will study. Why are we interested in the past? How is our understanding of the past shaped by the subjective interpretations of other scholars?

Course Format:
Weekly lectures will provide the framework of the course. The slides for each lecture are available on the course website.

Further Study Portfolio: Each student will be required to produce a “further study” web page image portfolio based on the contents of one class lecture. An average of three students will sign up per lecture. They will discuss their lecture notes as a team and decide on the topics of “further study.” Each student will then conduct additional research, beyond the material of the class lecture, in order to add 1-2 images to the image database and to annotate all the images he or she uses in the “further study” portfolio.
Final Paper: Each student will be required to write a final seven page, double spaced (3,500-4,000 words), final research paper. The paper should be based on their “Further Study Portfolio.”

Debates: There will be two team debates in which you will argue in favor or against a theoretical position. The purpose of the debates is to help you explore the historical, Your team will assemble the documents necessary to build up its case, and assign some of them as required reading to the class two weeks in advance. Debates will be structured as follows: exposition of the team’s thesis (7 minutes per side), rebuttal (5 minutes per side), open debate (30-40minutes), recess (10 minutes), questions from the floor (10 minutes), concluding statements (7 minutes per side), deliberation and voting by audience.Course

Requirements and Grading:
Group debate & research documents 30 points
Further Study Portfolio 30 points
Research paper 40 points

Download the full syllabus

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