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H+U+D Annual Report 2013-14

H+U+D Colloquium member explored the history and current preservation effforts underway at the Lazaretto site. photo credit: Conor Lucey

H+U+D Colloquium member explored the history and current preservation effforts underway at the Lazaretto site. photo credit: Conor Lucey

In the first year of the Humanities, Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) Initiative at Penn we have”

  • appointed and convened a 19-member multi-disciplinary Steering Committee
  • appointed and convened the 22-member multi-disciplinary H+U+D Colloquium
  • sponsored two new courses for the Spring 2014 semester:

ARCH 712/ARTH 581 Architects, Historians, and the Invention of Modern Architecture. Co- taught by Daniel Barber (Architecture) and David Brownlee (History of Art)

URBS 210 The City (Philadelphia). Co-taught by Michael Nairn (Urban Studies) and Eric Schneider (History)

  • approved two international city seminars” for 2014-15: a seminar on Paris co-taught by Professor Eugenie Birch ( City and Regional Planning) and Andrea Goulet (French and Francophone Studies), and a course on Rio co-taught by Daniel Barber (Architecture) and John Tresch (History and Sociology of Science)
  • convened, under the leadership of the co-directors, a bi-school faculty committee to develop an undergraduate general education course that introduces the interdisciplinary study of cities.
  • engaged a developer for the H+U+D website, which was launched in March 2014. URL is www.humanitiesurbanismdesign.com
  • inaugurated a program of research fund awards for undergraduate and graduate students who are working across disciplinary boundaries.

The Colloquium has successfully inaugurated the planned mixture of discussion-provoking activities: presentations by Colloquium members of their work, discussion of texts that we read together, discussions with scholars from elsewhere, and excursions to exhibitions and urban sites. In the fall, we visited and met with curators at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The spring schedule includes a site visit and meeting with the designers and sponsors of the reconstruction of Dilworth Plaza and a visit (by boat) to Philadelphia’s historic quarantine station, the Lazaretto. (See Attachment 2 for Colloquium membership and attachments 3 and 4 for the 2013-14 schedule).

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