Prof's Choice

Architecture, culture, and life's little things

Clifford geertz, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays (Basic Books, 1973) and Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books, 1983) Like many American studies graduates, I learned how to study and write about culture and cultural activities, including building, from the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz. These two collections of his essays have particularly influenced my approach to architectural history.

James deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (Doubleday, 1977) Historical archaeologist Deetz persuasively demonstrates the ways in which the ordinary objects of daily life the "small things forgotten" are eloquent historical documents that enable us to reconstruct the past, especially of from the written record.

Dell upton and jone michael vlach, editors, Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture (University of Georgia Press, 1986) Vernacular architecture studies is still a young field and much that has been written is available only in journal article form. This collection contains the field's most important articles.

Robert blair st. george, edttor, Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1988) The best collection of articles on yet another youthful field, material culture, which takes the view that information about how a culture lives and thinks is embedded in its material objects.

Winterthur portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture (Winterthur Museum/University of Chicago) From quilts to crockery, roadside signs to motels, this photo-studded quarterly journal provides the best coverage of American material culture.