ARCH 603, Section 3

While it is obvious that architecture has a history, the history of the land that architecture occupies, develops, commodifies, transforms, and at times destroys is typically ignored. How to historicize land? How to relate histories of land to histories of architecture? How do historicizations of land open onto anti-colonial, decolonial, and Indigenous histories? How to make amends to the land for the violence that has been and continues to be inflicted on it? We will grapple with these and related questions by historicizing the land we occupy on and around the University of Michigan campus. To do so, we will learn how to use archival material at the Bentley Library, Washtenaw County Register of Deeds Office, and other collections of historical sources, as well as how to do first-hand documentation and data-collection of land history.