This course explores the relation of the physical environment, understood as both given and constructed, to the larger and more ephemeral cultural context which it at once delimits and enables. The resultant scene-like spatial situations have been described within some academic disciplines as "cultural landscapes," a term meant to describe distinct geographical areas or properties uniquely representing the combined work of nature and humans. Deploying this concept of cultural landscapes as a framework, the course will plumb American culture with an emphasis on its physical dimension, exploring the ways that culture is engaged, reflected, and modified in the substance and configuration of those places wherein and through which we live our individual and collective lives. The course will ask students to explore how geography, topography, ecology, landscape, economics, and politics have influenced the reading and making of the American cultural landscape, and, perhaps more importantly, how the corporeal characteristics of constructed places have in turn shaped cultural developments and impacted, by extension, our world. At base, then, the course facilitates consideration of the fundamental interdependencies of nature, human nature, and the constructed environment in the context of U.S. culture. The politics of place are central to these explorations, but do not encompass them, since place intersects U.S. culture and society on many extra-political levels. The course will be founded on historical precedent and case studies, considered in light of key texts from various disciplines including urbanism, architecture, geography, film, philosophy, fiction, anthropology, and sociology, topical discussion, site visits, and the students' own analyses. NOTE: This course fulfills the U.S. Society (GU) requirement for students under GenEd. Students cannot receive credit for this course if they have successfully completed ARCH 0975.

-