457  SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SHAPE  (4 hrs. or 1 unit)

Professor Helaine Silverman
Office:  295  Davenport Hall;  PH:  333-1315

   helaine@uiuc.edu                              

A critical review of current literature offering major theoretical and empirical perspectives on space, place, landscape and the built environment. Readings are drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, architecture, landscape architecture, geography, and cultural studies.  Among the topics to be covered are the following.

• social space

• lived space/phenomenology of space, place, landscape

• architectural space

• monuments and memorialization

• the afterlife of monuments

• representations of space, landscape, place

• symbolism and iconography/society and cosmology in architecture/worldviews

• pilgrimage

• sacred space, sacred place

• tourism,  place, and placelessness

• otherness: gender, race, ethnicity

• abandoned space

• settlement pattern analysis, spatial analysis

• urban space and spatiality

• the spaces of colonialism

• landscapes of power

• contested public space

• virtual space

The professor will contextualize each week's topic by means of an introductory lecture (30 minutes). Students will be assigned to lead the discussion of the week's readings. Students will write critical notes of each week's readings so as to facilitate discussion. A term paper is required, a summary of which is to be presented in class during the final weeks of the semester. The final written version is due one week after the last class session.