Following in the footsteps of Aristotle’s Peripatetic School (from the ancient Greek, meaning “to walk about”), this course strolls conceptually and bodily through landscape history, tracing the deep roots of design history. Our investigation will begin with questioning the archive and how we define artifacts that speak to land-based histories. This meandering approach allows us to read land as a palimpsestic text, and thus to juxtapose the traditional “canon” with historically excluded narratives, new research on environmental history, a fieldwork-based approach to design, and the underlying relevance of time to all of these concepts.

The artifact–be it the site, the plan, or the text–is central throughout the semester. To be able to consider the artifact first and foremost, we will stroll and visit Harvard collections (the Peabody, Pusey, Harvard Archives, Herbarium, and Art Museum) and outdoor sites (rain or shine) across campus, where we will learn about and experience spaces corporeally. In addition to on-campus site visits, class field trips will also include Mount Auburn Cemetery. Assignments include active learning exercises during class time; reflective writing during lecture; and an object- and collections-based final research project.