J.B. Jackson's Vision of the City as Part of the Landscape
Helen Horowitz (Smith College)
Wednesday, October 7
12:00pm / School of Architecture, Betts Auditorium
During a long and distinguished career, John Brinckerhoff Jackson (19O9-1996) brought about a new understanding and appreciation of the American landscape. Hailed in 1995 by New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp as "America's greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies", Jackson founded Landscape Magazine in 1951, taught at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, and wrote nearly 200 essays and reviews. Jackson's focused his attention not on nature but on landscape -- land shaped by human presence. Jackson insists in his writings that the workaday world gives form to the essential American landscape. In the everyday places of the countryside and city, he discerns texts capable of revealing important truths about society and culture, present and past. Helen Horowitz will elaborate on J.B. Jackson's vision of the City as part of the landscape.
Helen Horowitz is the Sydenham Clark Parsons professor of history, emerita. Her research ranges over a number of areas: urban life, cultural philanthropy, women, higher education, biography, sexuality, sexual representation, censorship, intimate life, understandings of health and illness, understanding of the landscape, and tourism.
Discussant: Carla Yanni (Art History, Rutgers University)
