Short Research-based Studies

1. Artifact

Select one artifact from the Lost in New Haven collection and develop three potential narratives, each described in under 250 words.  Three are important.  Three ways to imbricate the object in a narrative.  Not just one argument, support and explore multiple narratives.

2. Building / Streetscape Study

Research social and physical history of a specific New Haven building and develop three potential narratives

3. Print / Multimedia Archives

Collage, Report, Video, Postcard, etc.

 

Short Field Studies

1. Dérive

Non-destination-oriented walking

2. Survey

Walking a field

3. Duration

Single-site over time

 

Final Project

Building on, incorporating, hopefully, some of the previous studies along with further research, a final project may take many forms:

• Proposal / outline for academic journal article
• Short prose for Platform, Places, etc.
• Proposal / teaser for video project
• Short video / multimedia
• Curatorial proposal for gallery, etc.
• Course curriculum
• Public scholarship / public art proposal
• Print: poster, pamphlet, map
• Podcast, Soundscape
• Planning document; design proposal
• Walking tour; field guide
• Proposal for Oral History project
• Ghost story

Possible themes are also broad:  “Urban Renewal”; neighborhood change; history of housing; the current building boom; brownfield sites, environmental justice, public space; industrial heritage, adaptive reuse; critical heritage; Goffe Street Armory; transport, mobility; building types; historical nodes; ghost maps, etc.

Readings and Screenings are organized in three themes:  1) Methods; 2) New Haven-based (and, by extension, the middle-sized northeastern United States industrial city); 3) Archives-based scholarship (secondary sources)

Consistent, twice-weekly interactions with course blog to 1) contribute and 2) respond is expected.

 

Course Outline

1. Seminar. Jan. 15

Sites and Stakes:  Where and Why wo do this work.

Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Studies,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, eds. Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi,

Paul Groth, “Generic Buildings and Cultural Landscapes as Sources of Urban History,” Journal of Architectural Education, Spring 1988:  41-44

Paul Groth, “Guidebooks as Community Service”

Sarah Lopez, “A Personal Reflection on People as ‘Subjects’ for Built Environment Research,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Vol. 29, No. 2, Fall 2022.

2. Lost in New Haven. Jan 22.

80 Hamilton Street

Intro Research Study 1:  Artifact Study.  Identify one-three artifacts (or artifact sets) to develop three research questions.  Develop three short narratives of potential research directions.

Gabrielle Brainard, “Party Walls: Understanding Urban Change Through a Block of New Haven Row Houses, 1870-1979,” Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, 2001.

Douglas Rae, City: Urbanism and its End (Yale Univ. Press, 2004), as much as you can.

Paul Groth, “ ‘Marketplace’ Vernacular Design: The Case of Downtown Rooming Houses,” Perspectrives in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 2 (1986): 179-191.

J.B. Jackson, “Stranger’s Path” Landscape Journal.

Suggested

Paul Groth, “Making New Connections in Vernacular Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architecture Historians, Sept. 1999: 444-451.

3. Seminar. Jan. 29.

Due:  Artifact Study:  Three narratives for your chosen objects.

Intro:  Assignment 2, Building Study, intro New Haven Building Archive

Zoya Brumberg-Kraus, “A Bridge at Powell and Clay:  Designing Chinese American Community in an Francisco’s Chinatown YWCA,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Volume 31, No. 1, Spring 2024.

Jessica Larson, “The Black Built Environment of Benevolence in New York’s Tenderloin District:  Comparative Architectural Approaches to Race, Reform, and Discipline, 1865-1910,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of the Vernacular  Architecture Forum, Vol. 31, No. 1, Spring 2024.

Zachary Violette, The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), selections

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Untimely Moderns: How Twentieth-Century Architecture Reimagined the Past (Yale University Press, 2023), selections.

Screening

Kent McKenzie, “Bunker Hill 1956”

ABC News, “The Lost Neighborhood,” 1962

4. New Haven Museum. Feb. 5

Active research today on your building project; city directories, Sanborn maps, newspapers, Dana Archive, Historic Resource Inventory, etc.

Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven: a Guide to Architecture and Urban Design

Robert W. Craig, “Fire Insurance Records and the Architectural Historian,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of  the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Vol. 30, No. 1/2, Spring 2023.

DH Projects: 

Mapping Inequality:  https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/Links to an external site.

Renewing Inequality:  https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogramLinks to an external site.

Photogrammar:  https://photogrammar.org/mapsLinks to an external site.

Living New Deal:  https://livingnewdeal.org/Links to an external site.

New Haven Building Project:  https://nhba.yale.edu/Links to an external site.

Etc.

5. Field Work. Feb. 12

 Walking a Cross-Section.  Site Visits.

6. Seminar. Feb. 19.

Due:  Building Study

Adrienne Brown, The Residential is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership (Stanford University Press, 2024).

7. Manuscripts and Archives. Feb. 26

 Intro: Assignment 3: Print, Multi-media Archives

8. Seminar. Mar. 5.

Discuss readings, emerging projects, documentation methods

Intro:  Field Exercise I – Dérive

Allan B. Jacobs, Looking at Cities (Harvard University Press, 1985).

Jahn Gehl and Birgitte Svarre, How to Study Public Life (Island Press, 2013).

Arjijit Sen, “Making a Case for Serendipity in Architectural Fieldwork,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Vol. 29, No. 2, Fall 2022.

Elaine B Stiles, “Fieldwork Futures:  Historic Preservation,” Buildings and Landscapes:  Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Vol. 30, No. 1/2, Spring 2023.

Essays by Guy Debord, Situationist International, and others are widely available, read.

SPRING RECESS

9. Workshop. Mar. 26

Field recording methods.

Due:  Urban Dérive

Garnette Cadogan, “Walking While Black, Literary Hub, July 8, 2026

https://lithub.com/walking-while-blackLinks to an external site.

Elihu Rubin, “Catch My Drift?  Situationist Dérive and Urban Pedagogy,” Radical History Review, Issue 114 (Fall 2012), 175-190

10. Field Work. Apr. 2

Observing and documenting public space

Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City, eds. Dana Cuff, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Todd Pressner, Maite Zubiaurre, and Jonathan Jae-an Crisman (MIT Press, 2020) 

11. Seminar. Apr. 9

Discuss readings, Projects Check-in

Jane Hutton, Reciprocal Landscapes:  Stories of Material Movements (Routledge, 2020), selections

Daniel Campo, Postindustrial DIY:  Recovering American Rustbelt Icons (Fordham University Press, 2024), selections.

Sara Safransky, The City after Property:  Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit, selections

12. Pin-Ups. Apr. 16

13. Pin-Ups. Apr. 23

Public Review:  Week of May 5