As old as a roadway that was once a Native trail, as new as the suburban subdivisions spreading across the American countryside, the cultural landscape is endlessly changing. The study of cultural landscapes—a far more recent development—has also undergone great changes, ever broadening, deepening, and refining our understanding of the intricate webs of social and ecological spaces that help to define human groups and their activities. Everyday America surveys the widening conceptions and applications of cultural landscape writing in the United States and, in doing so, offers a clear and compelling view of the state of cultural landscape studies today.
These essays—by distinguished journalists, historians, cultural geographers, architects, landscape architects, and planners—constitute a critical evaluation of the field’s theoretical assumptions, and of the work of John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the pivotal figure in the emergence of cultural landscape studies. At the same time, they present exemplary studies of twentieth-century landscapes, from the turn-of-the-century American downtown to the corporate campus and the mini-mall. Assessing the field’s accomplishments and shortcomings, offering insights into teaching the subject, and charting new directions for its future development, Everyday America is an eloquent statement of the meaning, value, and potential of the close study of human environments as they embody, reflect, and reveal American culture.
Everyday America Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson
About the Book
Reviews
"The book's interdisciplinary nature is one of its great gifts. The multiple authorial voices meld into a provocative dialogue that could be likened romantically to an urban market or an ideal academic conference. . . . Although J. B. Jackson did not single-handedly create cultural landscape studies in the United States, he profoundly shaped the field and its practitioners. This volume moves the endeavor forward by focusing a critical eye on his legacy. In the years to come, insights gained from it will inform increasingly complex readings of the built forms surrounding us."—CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship
"Everyday America is a fascinating and at times challenging collection of essays that will be essential reading for anyone working on cultural landscapes for years to come. If the book can be seen as a reflection on the 'state of the field' today, it also has potential to shape it in the sense that those reading it will be urged to rethink their own agendas and methods, which can only serve to reinvigorate studies of cultural landscapes or, at the very least, those of us studying them."—Winterthur Portfolio
“With this collection of essays, Groth and Wilson pay such a tribute, chiefly by demonstrating how, in the course of his career, Jackson shifted the ways planners, sociologists, policy analysts, anthropologists, landscape architects, historians, and geographers understood the implications of everyday cultural landscapes. . . . Both well-read Jackson scholars and relative newcomers to his works will find this book interesting. It will inspire those unfamiliar with his work to read his own words, as well as those of the many noted authors referenced throughout or who contributed to this volume.”—Material Culture
"Everyday America considers the shortcomings and blind spots of Jackson and his successors, but on the whole it encourages the direct observation of landscapes and celebrates Jackson’s protean contributions. Given the evidence of insightful scholarship across regions and disciplines that has been inspired and informed by Jackson’s work, it is easy to concur."—Technology and Culture
Table of Contents
PREFACE
1. The Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study: An Introduction
—Paul Groth and Chris Wilson
EVALUATING J.B. JACKSON
2. J.B. Jackson and the Play of the Mind: Inquiry and Assertion as Contact Sports
—Patricia Nelson Limerick
3. J.B. Jackson as a Critic of Modern Architecture
—Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
4. Learning from Brinck
—Denise Scott Brown
5. Looking Down the Road: J.B. Jackson and the American Highway Landscape
—Timothy Davis
TEACHING AND LEARNING LANDSCAPE VISION
6. The Monument and the Bungalow: The Intellectual Legacy of J.B. Jackson
—Peirce Lewis
7. Crossing the American Grain with Vesalius, Geddes, and Jackson: The Cross Section as a Learning Tool
—Grady Clay
8. Basic "Brincksmanship": Impressions Left in a Youthful Mind
—Jeffrey W. Limerick
9. Observations of Faith: Landscape Context in Design Education
—Tracy Walker Moir-McClean
QUESTIONING THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS
10. On Modern Vernaculars and J.B. Jackson
—Gwendolyn Wright
11. What (Else) We Talk about When We Talk about Landscape: For a Return to the Social Imagination
—George L. Henderson
12. Normative Dimensions of Landscape
—Richard H. Schein
13. Private Property and the Ecological Commons in the American West
—Mark Fiege
INTERPRETING TWENTIETH-CENTURY URBAN LANDSCAPES
14. Gender, Imagination, and Experience in the Early-Twentieth-Century American Downtown
—Jessica Sewell
15. Campus, Estate, and Park: Lawn Culture Comes to the Corporation
—Louise A. Mozingo
16. The Enacted Environment: Examining the Streets and Yards of East Los Angeles
—James Rojas
17. Medicine in the (Mini) Mall: An American Health Care Landscape
—David C. Sloane
Notes
Contributors
Illustration Credits
Index
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