Master Builders

Catalog description

Using the lens of literature, this course explores how the built environment—from the Great Pyramids to modern-day skyscrapers—reflects and projects our personal and cultural history, values, and vision. Part environmental studies, part literature and writing studies, and part visual rhetoric, this course re-envisions the very concept of literature and “text” and asks: How do architectural works emerge from a culture’s values? How might they mirror society’s hierarchy or the challenges to that hierarchy? How might the culture’s “architects”—writers, leaders, builders, or artists—suggest or impose a future onto a society—political, spiritual, ethical, or otherwise? Finally, how do different genres of writing and literature—from nonfiction autobiography to drama and poetry—offer us a framework for addressing the global and personal challenges that await us?