This volume brings together nineteen essays from an array of academic disciplines -- American studies, folklore, history, architectural history, and architecture -- which are currently contributing to the study of vernacular structures and places. Addressing places as distant from each other as rural Massachusetts and Hawai'i and building types as disparate as Native American houses in Alaska and vacation cottages in Florida, the contributors are unified in their concern with community building and place making.As the editors note, scholarship on vernacular forms once focused rather narrowly...

Bringing together scholarship in diverse fields - including architecture, geography, folklore, anthropology, and urban studies - the seventeen essays in this volume confirm the transformations now occurring in the study of vernacular architecture. Moving away from a single vision of vernacular architecture that consisted only of old, rural, handmade structures built in traditional forms and materials for everyday use, scholars are exploring a wider variety of forms and landscapes - from company towns to grand expositions. Drawn from two conferences of the Vernacular Architecture Forum - one...

Although vernacular architecture scholarship has expanded beyond its core fascination with common buildings and places, its attention remains fixed on the social function of building. Consistent with this expansion of interests, Constructing Image, Identity, and Place includes essays on a wide variety of American building types and landscapes drawn from a broad geographic and chronological spectrum. Subjects range from examinations of the houses, hotels and churches of America s colonial and Republican elite to analyses of the humble cottages of Southern sharecroppers and mill workers,...