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Academic Year 2004/2005

Building Houses, Building Identities: Architecture in the Atlantic World, From Africa to America
ARHA 294 SP

African architecture, from houses to monumental mosques, reflects cultural interaction and identities. From 1550 to 1850 twelve million Africans were forcibly transported from their homes to the Americas. They brought with them cultural knowledge and technological expertise. That knowledge transformed the landscape, from Brazil to New Orleans to Virginia. Historians are only now beginning to understand that the Atlantic basin can best be understood as a cultural unit. From Senegal to Brazil, African architecture created a new, hybrid style. This course studies the buildings of the Atlantic basin. From the great mosques of medieval West Africa to the plantation houses of Brazil, African builders introduced concepts and forms that included the verandah, the enclosed porch or gallery, and probably, too, the shotgun house.

This course looks first at African art and architecture, then at the spread of African technology to the New World. We will have a field trip, to New York. There are no prerequisites for the course, which is cross-listed as both art History and African-American Studies.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005

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