VAF IN MADISON - JUNE 2012

Call for Papers for VAF 2012 Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin

The Vernacular Architecture Forum invites paper proposals for its Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, June 6-10, 2012. Papers may address vernacular and everyday buildings, sites, or cultural landscapes worldwide. Submissions on all vernacular topics are welcome, but we encourage papers that explore topics related to the following conference themes: the relationship between rural landscapes and regional urban centers; placemaking as it pertains to the relationship between work and home; regional trends in modernism (particularly in the Upper Midwest); ethnicity and heritage preservation; and evolution of Midwestern rural buildings and landscapes. We particularly welcome papers that explore the relationship of environmental history and cultural landscapes around these themes. Papers should be twenty minutes in length, although proposals for complete sessions, roundtable discussions, or other innovative means that facilitate scholarly discourse are also welcome.

Proposals must be one page, fewer than 400 words, and include paper title, author's name, and email address. You may include up to two images with your submission. Please state clearly the argument of the paper and explain the methodology and content. Attach a one-page CV to your proposal submission. The deadline for proposals is September 12, 2011.

Presenters must deliver their papers in person and be VAF members at the time of the conference. Speakers who do not register for the conference by April 1, 2012 will be withdrawn. Please do not submit an abstract if you are not committed to attending the papers session on Saturday June 9. There may be limited financial assistance, in the form of Presenter’s Fellowships, to offset registration costs to students and recent graduates.

Electronic submissions of proposals and CVs in Word format are preferred. Please send email proposals to Andrew Dolkart at asd3@columbia.edu or hard copies to:

Andrew Dolkart:
Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
413 Avery Hall
New York, NY 10027

For general information about the Madison conference, please contact:

Anna Vemer Andrzejewski
Department of Art History & the Buildings-Landscapes Cultures Program
University of Wisconsin-Madison
avandrzejews@wisc.edu

Manu Sobti Wins Award

Professor Manu P. Sobti's research proposal, "Escaping Flatland: (Re)Writing the Histories, Geographies and Borderland Ecologies of Water", written in collaboration with Timothy J. Ehlinger (Biology) and Ryan B. Holifield (Geography) has been awarded funding under C21's TRANSDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGES FOR 21ST CENTURY STUDIES RFP 2011. The $280,000 funding shall support research for two years on a unique project that examines borderland ecologies at the global scale, including detailed studies of the the Mississippi Basin, the Danube Delta, the Oxus River (Amu Darya) and Aral Sea region, and the Ganges Delta. It shall provide opportunities for doctoral students within theBuilding-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Program, graduate students and interested faculty, via multiple seminars, a publication series, and the development of a comprehensive course syllabus.

This is the first-ever venture that allows the humanities to converse with the sciences at UWM and make lasting change.

Arijit Sen named UWM Libraries Featured Scholar

http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/News/feature_scholar10.cfm

BLC Professor Tom Hubka awarded the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor award

ACSA Distinguished Professor Award

Professor Thomas Hubka has been honored with a 2009-2010 Distinguished Professor Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. The award is bestowed to "recognize sustained creative achievement in the advancement of architectural education through teaching, design, scholarship, research, or service." 

News article in Architect


See also news article on 
Professor Thomas Hubka, author of “Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn”, keynote speaker at FHS’ Annual Meeting, Thursday, May 27th

On 12/14/2008 Associate Professor Anna Andrzejewski spoke about the architecture of surveillance on Wisconsin Public Radio's  University of the Air program.  She discusses her book Building Power: Architecture and Surveillance in Victorian America.

The audio file can be downloaded here: http://clipcast.wpr.org:8080/ramgen/wpr/uoa/uoa081214.rm

Sunday

12/14/2008

4:00 PM

University of the Air 

The design of buildings can tell us a good deal about the builders' attitude toward the people who worked in them. After four, on University of the Air, a look at the architecture of surveillance.

Fromkin scholar eyes influential arts educator

Arijit Sen, assistant professor in UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, is the recipient of the 2010 Fromkin Research Grant and Lectureship. His project is titled “Charlotte Partridge, Layton School of Art and the Pedagogy of Social Engagement, 1920-1954.”

A Wisconsin native, Partridge “was one of the first women educators in the United States to imbue art education with a social agenda, transforming curriculum and encouraging socially-conscious activism,” Sen says.

Feeling constrained by teaching methods at Milwaukee’s Downer College for Women, Partridge left her position as head of the Fine Arts Department in 1920, and helped establish, with Miriam Frink, a new Layton School of Art and Design.

“What began with borrowed equipment and space became a nationally recognized school of art within a decade,” Sen says. “In addition to a groundbreaking coeducational curriculum, many teaching methods that are considered standard practice today were introduced in Layton.”

Sen’s  lecture, to be delivered at the Golda Meir Library in the fall, will highlight the history of these women educators, their innovations, and the Layton School’s role in social activism, and also offer “a unique method of reading public history by locating everyday politics within separate but related socio-spatial domains,” including classrooms, boardrooms, art galleries, and meeting rooms.

The Fromkin lecture series, sponsored by the UWM Libraries, is the longest-running continuous lecture series on campus.

More information about the annual $5000 Fromkin Research Grant is available at http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/special/fromkin/grant.cfm
News Article in http://www4.uwm.edu/news/

New Symposium at BLC Milwaukee

Embodied Placemaking

Save the date! The first part of our symposium, Embodied Placemaking in Urban Public Spaces, will be held on Friday, October 8, 2010. This symposium will focus on how people engage the material and social worlds of the urban environment via the rhythms of everyday life and the ways physiological bodily responses get implicated in the making and experiencing of place. For further information and tentative schedule . . .

Friday, October 8, 2010 Curtin Hall 175, 9 am - 5 pm

Co-sponsored by UWM Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Initiative, Center for Jewish Studies, Cultures & Communities Program, Departments of Anthropology and Geography, and the Urban Studies Program. http://www4.uwm.edu/21st/