House and Home in American Culture Series
A Conversations Series presented by the American & New England Studies Program
Fall 2010
Thursday, September 16, 6:00 p.m., 226 Bay State Road, Room 110
The Poetics of Space
Introductory session and discussion of Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
Please read the excerpt from Chapter 1, “The house, from cellar to garret, the significance of the hut.”
Audio of the Bachelard Conversation, House and Home, 9-16-10
Thursday, October 14, 5:30 p.m., CAS 200
Fragile Dwelling
Margaret Morton, Photographer; Professor, School of Art, The Cooper Union, New York City
Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City created places to live in the city’s public parks, vacant lots, riverfronts, and underground tunnels. One can see in these homes not only a need for shelter, security, and privacy, but also a sense of pride, place, and individuality. Morton will discuss how these assemblages of crates, scrap wood, broken furniture, and other debris of the modern city are in fact homes, laboriously and ingeniously built.
Audio from the Margaret Morton conversation, October 14, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 5:30 p.m., 226 Bay State Road, Room 110
A Hut of His Own: Thoreau’s Romantic Domesticity
Charles Capper, Professor of History, Boston University
AND
Domestic Politics: At Home with Harriet Beecher Stowe
Hunt Howell, Assistant Professor of English, Boston University
Discussion will follow, please join us!
Capper and Howell Conversation Flyer
Audio from the Capper-Howell conversation, November 4, 2010
Monday, December 6, 5:30 p.m., CAS 200
Being There: Habitation and Photography in Works by Wright Morris
Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Professor Emeritus of English & American Studies, Yale University
Wright Morris’s combination of words and photographs resulted in works of fiction in which image and text relate to each other in unexpected ways. Dr. Trachtenberg will speak on works such as Wright Morris’s The Home Place–a path breaking example of the integration of photographs and narrative text in documentation of the 1940s Midwest. Dr. Trachtenberg has written extensively on American cultural history, particularly literature and the history of photography.
Trachtenberg Conversation Flyer
Audio from the Trachtenberg Conversation, December 6, 2010
Spring 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 6:00 p.m., 226 Bay State Road, Room 110
A Different Dream: At Home in High-Rise, Middle-Class New York
Rosalie Genevro, Executive Director, Architectural League of New York
Genevro Flyer–Rescheduled Date
Audio from the Genevro Conversation, February 23, 2011
Monday, March 21, 5:30 p.m., CAS 200
Skid Row: Poverty and Place
Ella Howard, AMNESP ’07, Assistant Professor of History, Armstrong Atlantic State University
Audio from the Howard Conversation, March 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 5:30 p.m., 226 Bay State Road, Room 110
Into the field: Researching Regional Architecture
Claire Dempsey, Associate Professor of American and New England Studies; Director, Preservation Studies Program, Boston University
AND
“La cucina all’americana:” American Domestic Ideals in Postwar Italian Homes
Paolo Scrivano, Assistant Professor of Art History, Boston University
Discussion will follow. Please join us for our last House and Home conversation!
Dempsey-Scrivano Conversation Flyer
Please direct any questions to Jessica Roscio, jlroscio@bu.edu
This series is supported by the Boston University Humanities Foundation and the College of Arts and Sciences