patricklee lucas, associate professor and director, school of interiors
112 pence hall :859.257.4853 :
credits : 3
pre-requisites or co-requisites: none
F O R W H O M P L A N N E D
Students from all majors and levels may take this course to broaden their understanding of the American house and its furnishings. The course provides one of the core experiences for a learning community on emerging energy.
C O U R S E D E S C R I P T I O N
In this course, students explore the American house form as a product of global migration from its Colonial beginnings to the present day. Field could extend past class meetings and additional fees may be associated with the course.
A P P R O A C H
Students undertake comparative analysis, utilize historical precedent, utilize magazines and other visual sources, and investigate across three scales of design (furnishings, finishes, and spaces) to examine the values and ideas imbedded in the nation’s most ubiquitous building form. In the first part of the course, students will place housing forms in historical context. Students will analyze the three most common house forms of the twentieth century: the bungalow, the ranch, and the mcmansion. In the second part of the course, students will turn inward to examine furnishings, finishes, and spaces within houses and their evolutions and concurrences over time. In this half of the course, students will focus on the stuff of everyday life, expressed in material form, which gives shape to our inner worlds. Particular emphasis will be paid to furnishing and finishes as a means of expression.
L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S
At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to:
[1] identify and evaluate the characteristics of the American house as it has evolved over time;
[2] demonstrate understanding of the global forces that shape the American home;
[3] interpret three inter-related scales of design within the American home as an expression of values realized in tangible form;
[4] understand emerging issues of dwellings in time and space to explain how they continue to bear on the current American house form;
[5] explain the impact of cultural factors such as gender roles, class, and technology on the form and function of American housing;
[6] articulate how social reformers, architectural professionals, residents, servants, and the federal government shaped housing in sometimes competing ways.
T E A C H I N G M E T H O D S
This course brings together lectures, online exploration, fieldwork, and magazine research. During class, I will combine traditional lecture with small group activities supplemented by field trips to selected neighborhoods in Lexington. Your grade in this course will be determined by the number of points earned out of a possible 1000 points distributed as follows:
participation 250 points
online explorations200 points
no place like home100 points
fieldwork150 points
magazine research100 points
livable portraits200 points
As active learners, I expect you to fully participate in class and engage in thoughtful and thorough analysisof the built environment in class and in all assignments. You will be assessed on the following scale:A=100.00-90.00; B=89.99-80.00; C=79.99-70.00; D=69.99-60.00; E=59.99-0. To obtain an “A” one must not only satisfy the project requirements to a high level of quality, but one must surpass prescribed conditions and minimum requirements.
R E Q U I R E D R E A D I N G S
Though there is no required text for this course, writings on the American house and its furnishings proliferate on and off-line. We will use these seminal readings as points of departure for key lectures as noted in the calendar at the end of this syllabus.
Ames, K.Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture. Philadelphia: Temple, 1992. [ereserves]
Archer, John. “Ideology and Aspiration: Individualism, the Middle Class, and the Genesis of the Anglo-American Suburb,” Journal of Urban History 14:2 (1988): 214-253. [use journal finder]
Attfield, J. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. New York: Berg, 2001. [ereserves]
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Spaces. New York: Beacon, 1994. [ereserves]
Baxandall, Rosalyn and Elizabeth Ewen. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York: Basic Books, 2000. [ereserves]
Bryson, B. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010. [ereserves]
Bushman, R. L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Vintage, 1992. [ereserves]
Clark, C. E. The American Family Home, 1800-1960. Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 1986. [ereserves]
Cohen, Lizabeth, “Residence: Inequality in Mass Suburbia.” In A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage, 2003. [ereserves]
Cohen, Lizabeth. “Embellishing a Life of Labor.” In Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, ed. Dell Upton and John Vlach, 261-278. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986. [ereserves]
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. “Coal Stoves and Clean Sinks: Housework between 1890 and 1930.” In American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services, ed. Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth, 211-224. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. [ereserves]
Cromley, Elizabeth Collins. “At Home in the First Apartment Houses.” In Alone Together: A History of New York’s Early Apartments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. [ereserves]
Dolan, Michael. The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place. New York: Lyons Press, 2002. [ereserves]
Donaghy, E. At Home: The American Family, 1750-1870. New York: Abrams, 1990. [ereserves]
Feagin, Joe. “The Other Suburbanites: African American Suburbanization in the North before 1950.” Journal of American History 85:4 (March 1999): 1495-1525. [use journal finder]
Gilliam, Jan K. “The Evolution of the House in Early Virginia.” In The American Home: Material Culture, Domestic Space, and Family Life, ed. Eleanor McD. Thompson, 177-196. Winterthur, DE: Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum. Distributed by Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998. [ereserves]
Graffam, Olive Blair. “‘They Are Very Handy’: Kitchen Furnishings, 1875-1920.” In The American Home: Material Culture, Domestic Space, and Family Life, ed. Eleanor McD. Thompson, 217-240. Winterthur, DE: Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum. Distributed by Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998. [ereserves]
Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York: Random House. 2004. [ereserves]
Herman, Bernard.Town House: Architecture and Material Life. Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 2005. [ereserves]
Isenstadt, Sandy. The Modern American House: Spaciousness and Middle Class Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Jakle, John A. City Lights: Illuminating the American Night. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. [ereserves]
Katz-Hyman, Martha B. "’In the Middle of This Poverty Some Cups and a Teapot’: The Furnishing of Slave Quarters at Colonial Williamsburg.” In The American Home: Material Culture, Domestic Space, and Family Life, ed. Eleanor McD. Thompson, 197-216. Winterthur, DE: Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum. Distributed by Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998. [ereserves]
Kunstler, James Howard. Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. [ereserves]
Marling, Karal Ann. “Nixon in Moscow: Appliances, Affluence, and Americanism.” In As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. [ereserves]
Marsh, Margaret. “From Separation to Togetherness: The Social Construction of Domestic Space in American Suburbs, 1840-1915.” Journal of American History 76:2 (September 1989): 506-527. [use journal finder]
O’Leary, Elizabeth L. At Beck and Call: The Representation of Domestic Servants in Nineteenth-Century American Painting. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press,1996
Rybczynski, Witold. Home: A Short History of An Idea. New York: Dover, 1986.
Smith, Elizabeth A.T. Case Study Houses. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009
Teyssot, George, ed. The American Lawn. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
Volz, Candace M. “The Modern Look of the Early Twentieth-Century House.” In American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services, ed. Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth, 25-48. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. [ereserves]
Whitaker, Jan. Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.
Wright, Gwendolyn. “Independence and the Rural Cottage.” In American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener, 142-154. [ereserves]
T O P I C A L O U T L I N E
UNIT ONE :LOOKING AROUND
Week 1. Indigenous forms + Colonial influences
Week 2. Nineteenth-century urban and extra-urban landscapes
Week 3. The Bungalow
Week 4. The Ranch
Week 5. The McMansion + Snout House
Week 6. Forms and Spaces for the New Millenium
UNIT TWO : LOOKING INWARD
Week 7. Receiving (Porch, Hall)
Week 8. Entertaining + Eating (Parlor, Living Room, Dining Room, Great Room)
Week 9. Behind the Scenes (Kitchens, Pantries, Sculleries, and More)
Week 10. Beyond Public View (Bed chambers + Private spaces)
Week 11.The Den and the Rec Room
Week 12. Above and Below (The Basement + Attic)
Week 12. Building systems (Heating, cooling, plumbing, structure)
Week 13. The Verandah, Portico, Porte Cochere, Carport, Patio, and Deck
Week 14. The Suburban Lawn
Week 15. Houses as Livable Portraits
P A R T I C I P A T I O N
This assessment will be based on three criteria:
1. Consistent attendance– Since wewill critically evaluate the content of the assigned readings and practice analytical skills during each class period, this course moves beyond traditional lecture. You will not be able to make up for your absences by copying someone else's notes. For this reason, consistent attendance is essential to your learning in this course.
2. Thorough preparation for class – Students must complete all readings before class and turn assignments in on time. I do not accept late work for unexcused absences.
3. Regular contributions to class discussions – Our time together represents time where we gather, where you have access to insights from your peers, and where we can engage in a broader discussion about the American house and its furnishings. The success of this course for your learning depends on active intellectual engagement with your peers.
Here’s an example of how the participation grade is calculated: a student attended class 87% of the time, asked or answered several questions during the semester, actively participated in group discussions, but failed to turn in two ungraded assignments and turned in at least one graded assignment late. Though attendance and participation might suggest a B+ for this student, the late assignments mean that this student cannot make higher than a B- and could even be in the C-range depending on the nature of the missed assignments.
O N L I N E E X P L O R A T I O N S
Taking advantage of the wealth of information available online about the American house and its furnishings, students will watch selected episodes of television shows, a movie, and troll the internet for resources to share with their peers. These online explorations will be recorded and shared in a precise system described in class.
F I E L D W O R K
We will take a couple of field trips to nearby neighborhoods during the course. Students will record and report on their observations to these physical places, relying on photography, writing, and sketching (when appropriate). This course involves fieldwork that could extend past the class meeting time; there will be approximately $30 in fees associated with this fieldwork. Students should make every effort to attend with the group but alternatives will be offered when requested due to conflicts with other university commitments.
N O P L A C E L I K E H O M E
Turning inward to home, students will provide an autobiographical “sketch” in the form of a report on their own home. This first step of the research process will be for students to demonstrate their skills at describing and accounting for elements of houses, tying those to course materials.
M A G A Z I N E R E S E A R C H
Students will investigate and report on issues of key magazines for the year assigned in class. At minimum, a student must review twelve issues of the magazine. Each survey will contain, at minimum: a statement of general trends observed in house design for the year assigned and a featured house, selected by the investigator, and reported on in detail.
L I V A B L E P O R T R A I T S
Synthesizing research and experiences from the semester, each student will present a home of their choosing as a livable portrait. The posters presented will provide the opportunity for the class to visit the ensemble, emulating the fieldwork experiences earlier in the semester.
E X A M I N A T I O N S
This course has neither a mid-term or final examination.
A T T E N D A N C E P O L I C Y
Students need to notify the professor of absences prior to class when possible. Senate Rule 5.2.4.2 defines the following as acceptable reasons for excused absences: (a) serious illness, (b) illness or death of family member, (c) University-related trips, (d) major religious holidays, and (e) other circumstances found to fit “reasonable cause for nonattendance” by the professor. Students will not be penalized for missing class for an excused absence.
Students anticipating an absence for a major religious holiday are responsible for notifying the instructor in writing of anticipated absences due to their observance of such holidays no later than the last day in the semester to add a class.
Students are expected to withdraw from the class if more than 20% of the classes scheduled for the semester are missed (excused) per university policy.
Per Senate Rule 5.2.4.2, students missing any graded work due to an excused absence are responsible: for informing the Instructor of Record about their excused absence within one week following the period of the excused absence (except where prior notification is required); and for making up the missed work. The professor must give the student an opportunity to make up the work and/or the exams missed due to an excused absence, and shall do so, if feasible, during the semester in which the absence occurred.
Verification of Absences
Students may be asked to verify their absences in order for them to be considered excused. Senate Rule 5.2.4.2 states that faculty have the right to request “appropriate verification” when students claim an excused absence because of illness or death in the family. Appropriate notification of absences due to university-related trips is required prior to the absence.
A C A D E M I C I N T E G R I T Y
Thestudyofinteriordesign andprofessionaldesign practicereliesuponactive,cooperativedesigninvestigationinformedby theconceptualandfactualstudyoftheory andhistory. Consequently, academicstudyanddesigninvestigationmustcomply withstrictacademicandprofessionalstandardsforintellectualintegrity.
Peruniversitypolicy,studentsshallnotplagiarize,cheat,orfalsifyormisuseacademicrecords.Studentsareexpectedto adheretoUniversitypolicyoncheatingandplagiarisminallcourses. Theminimumpenaltyfora firstoffenseisa zeroonthe assignment onwhichtheoffenseoccurred. Iftheoffenseisconsideredsevereorthestudenthasotheracademicoffenses ontheirrecord,moreseriouspenalties,uptosuspensionfromtheuniversitymay beimposed.
Plagiarismandcheatingareseriousbreaches ofacademicconduct. Eachstudentisadvisedtobecomefamiliarwiththe variousformsofacademicdishonestyasexplainedintheCodeofStudentRightsandResponsibilities.Completeinformation canbefoundatthefollowing website: Apleaofignoranceisnotacceptableas adefense againstthechargeofacademicdishonesty.Itisimportantthatyoureviewthisinformationas allideasborrowedfromothers needtobeproperlycredited.
Part IIofStudentRights andResponsibilitiesstatesthat allacademicwork,writtenorotherwise,submittedbystudentstotheirinstructorsorotheracademicsupervisors,isexpected tobetheresultoftheirownthought,research,orself-expression.Incaseswherestudentsfeelunsureaboutthequestionof plagiarisminvolvingtheirownwork,they areobligedtoconsulttheirinstructorsonthematterbeforesubmission. (
Whenstudentssubmitworkpurportingtobetheirown,butwhichinanywayborrowsideas,organization,wordingor anythingelsefromanothersourcewithoutappropriateacknowledgementofthefact,thestudentsareguiltyofplagiarism. Plagiarismincludes reproducingsomeoneelse’swork,whetheritbeapublishedarticle,chapterofabook,apaperfroma friendorsomefile,orsomethingsimilartothis.Plagiarismalsoincludes thepracticeofemploying orallowinganotherperson toalterorrevisethework,whicha studentsubmitsashis/herown,whoeverthatotherpersonmay be.
Studentsmay discussassignmentsamongthemselvesorwithan instructorortutor,butwhentheactual workisdone,it mustbedonebythestudent,andthestudentalone.Whenastudent’sassignment involvesresearchinoutsidesourcesof information,thestudentmustcarefullyacknowledgeexactlywhat,whereandhowhe/sheemployedthem. Ifthewordsof someoneelseareused,thestudentmustputquotationmarksaroundthepassage inquestionandaddanappropriate indicationofitsorigin.Makingsimplechangeswhileleavingtheorganization,contentandphraseology intactisplagiaristic. However,nothingintheseRulesshallapplytothoseideas,whicharesogenerallyandfreelycirculatedastobea partofthe publicdomain(Section6.3.1).
Pleasenote: Anyassignmentyouturninmay besubmittedtoanelectronicdatabasetocheckforplagiarism.
A C C O M M O D A T I O N S D U E T O V A R Y I N G A B I L I T I E S
If you have a documented disability that requires academic accommodations, please see me as soon as possible during scheduled office hours. In order to receive accommodations in this course, you must provide me with a Letter of Accommodation from the Disability Resource Center (DRC). The DRC coordinates campus disability services available to students with disabilities. It is located on the corner of Rose Street and Huguelet Drive in the Multidisciplinary Science Building, Suite 407. You can reach them via phone at (859) 257-2754 and via email at . Their web address is
V E R I F I C A T I O N
From your preferred e-mail account, send a message by Friday of the first week of class by 5pm indicating that you have read and understood this syllabus. Place “id283” in the subject line. In sending this email, you confirm your commitment to the UK Policy on Academic Integrity.
The above procedures in this course are subject to change due to extenuating circumstances.
C A L E N D A R
U N I T O N E : L O O K I N G A R O U N D
Week 1. Indigenous forms + Colonial influences
READ: Gilliam, “The Evolution of the House in Early Virginia.” [ereserves]
Bushman, The Refinement of America. [ereserves]
15 JanCourse themes + approaches
17 JanGentry houses
Week 2. Nineteenth-century urban and extra-urban landscapes
READ: Wright, “Independence and the Rural Cottage.” [ereserves]
Cromley, “At Home in the First Apartment Houses.” [ereserves]
Cohen, “Embellishing a Life of Labor.” [ereserves]
Herman, Town House [ereserves]
LAUNCH : On line explorations
22 JanUrban life, suburban life
24 JanReform
Week 3. The Bungalow
READ:Marsh, “From Separation to Togetherness.” [use journal finder]
Volz, “The Modern Look of the Early Twentieth-Century House.” [ereserves]
Wiese, “The Other Suburbanites.” [use journal finder]
29 JanFrom the Victorian cottage to the bungalow
31 JanRace and the American house
Week 4. The Ranch
READ: Cohen, “Residence: Inequality in Mass Suburbia.” [ereserves]
Smith, Case Study Houses [ereserves]
LAUNCH : No place like home
05 FebCase Study Houses exploration (in class)
07 FebA look at Lexington in the decade of the Civil Rights movement
Week 5. The McMansion + Snout House
READ:Archer, “Ideology and Aspiration.” [use journal finder]
Hayden, Building Suburbia [ereserves]
Kunstler, “Who We Are.” [ereserves]
12 FebIdeologies on the landscape
14 FebNostalgia and futurism
Week 6. Forms and Spaces for the New Millenium
READ: Bachelard, “House and Universe.” [ereserves]
Tuan, Cosmos and Hearth [ereserves]