ARTH 305 North American Suburbs (Same as Environmental Studies 305) (Not offered 1997-98)

A course detailing the intentions, built forms, and historical unfolding of that environment which now houses more Americans than either city or countryside. Among the topics to be discussed will be: seminal suburban communities in various regions of Canada and the United States; the quest for a rural ideal and the celebration of a tamed outdoors; the extent to which suburbs are peculiarly environments for child-raising, with the attendant purport given in the modern age to youth; the successional patterns as farmlands or estates are subdivided and later even become part of a central business district; the kaleidoscope of architectural styles and revivals; the manner in which these communities may be products of their various linkage systems to a central place, or city; the degree to which they are increasingly centers in their own right, with attendant automobile-induced horizontality; and the unfolding historiography of the North American suburb. For that historiography the seminar will scrutinize comparatively the work of such scholars or commentators as Binford, Gans, Kenneth Jackson, Mumford, Sies, Stilgoe, and Venturi. Each classmember will conduct field studies on a suburb or suburban element of his or her choosing; this research will be used in three papers. Upon them and class discussion the grade will be based.
No prerequisites. Open to sophomores.

SATTERTHWAITE