Post Field School Research

Four undergraduate students who participated in the Thurston Woods Field School presented their post field school research at the UWM undergraduate research symposium.

Zach and Nathan worked on the new Thurston Woods website. The website is not yet public, but you may see parts of it at http://blcprogram.org/picturing-milwaukee/
Abida used the skills she learnt at the field school to conduct independent research on immigrant communities in Milwaukee.
Ariel revised his work (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTCWneVwxf8) into a conference length paper.

Congratulations! Ariel, Abida, Zach and Nathan!!!

Summer 2013 Field School in Buildings, Landscapes and Cultures

City, Nature, People

Summer 2013 Field School in Buildings, Landscapes and Cultures

Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Class Dates: June 10 - July 13, 2013
Preparatory Workshop (attendance required), June 3, 2013, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Room 191, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UWM

You will need to apply in order to be admitted. We will be accepting a maximum of 15 students. If you request academic credit you will need to sign up for an UWM summer course. Summer School fee schedules are not online yet, but you may consult the 2012 rates in order to get an idea of the costs involved. http://blcfieldschool.blogspot.com/p/summer-housing-fees-enrollment-travel.html

For more information or for a copy of an application form, please contact Prof. Arijit Sen at senA@uwm.edu.

Course Numbers: You may choose 6 credit hours from the following course numbers. 

ARCH 534 Field Study: Historic Water Tower Neighborhood Field School satisfy an elective for the ecological and preservation concentrations –3 cr.
ARCH 561 Measured Drawing for Architects. –3 cr.
ARCH 562 Preservation Technology Laboratory. –3 cr.
Arch 390: Independent studies for undergraduate students. –3 cr.

This 6-credit course provides students an immersion experience in the field recording of the built environment and cultural landscapes and an opportunity to learn how to write history literally “from the ground up.” This year, we will focus on the ethics of ecological stewardship and historic preservation practiced in the Historic Water Tower Neighborhood (HWTN) of Milwaukee. The neighborhood’s history dates back to the days when the City expanded northwards along the lake. The area has many historic and designated buildings, a number of residential historic districts, an extensive park system, bluffs of Lake Michigan and one business historical district. The National Register of Historic Places has created five separate districts within HWTN’s boundaries and named several notable buildings separately.

The five-week course calendar covers a broad array of academic skills. Workshops during Week 1 will focus on photography, measured drawings, documentation and technical drawings; no prior experience is necessary. Week 2 will include workshops on oral history interviewing and digital ethnography. Week 3 is centered on mapping and archival research. Week 4 and 5 will be devoted to producing final reports and documentaries. Students will learn how to “read” buildings within their urban material, soical, ecological and cultural contexts, create reports on historic buildings and cultural landscapes and produce multimedia documentaries. Nationally recognized faculty directing portions of this school include Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Michael H. Frisch, Professor and Senior Research Scholar, University at Buffalo, Jasmine Alinder, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Michael Gordon, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Matthew Jarosz, Associate Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Historic Preservation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Group travel, documentary equipment, and supplies, will be provided, but students must be able to fund their own meals and modest lodging accommodations (if they are from out of town).

This field school is sponsored by Historic Water Tower Neighborhood, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Department of History, School of Letters and Sciences, UWM.

2013 FIELD SCHOOL POSTER

2012 Exhibit Monograph on Sale

2012 Field School Documentaries are online now

Student Documentaries

Thank you all

UWM News Story

Retrieving stories from a hidden neighborhood

By Laura L. Hunt on July 17, 2012

Villard Avenue, the main shopping district of the Thurston Woods neighborhood, was thriving in the 1950s.

A summer as hot as this one brings back a particular memory for residents of Milwaukee’s Thurston Woods neighborhood: how they used to gather at the public pool in McGovern Park. But the pool was closed several years ago after decades of those collective memories.

It’s one lament recorded by UWM students participating in a unique oral history field school, a joint venture between the UWM Department of History and the graduate-level Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) program that enrolls both UWM architecture students and UW-Madison art history students.

Neighborhood Histories

NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORIES  is an effort to link research and history with a greater community.  Often we see history as static information disassociated with our everyday lives.  Museums, historic sites, and markers are much needed ways of disseminating information to the public but often their content overlooks the relationship between history and our modern lives.  When we explore those places that we live in we discover a wealth of information about ourselves; past, present, and future.  The methods we use to examine the built environment come from various sources and therefore, cross a number of disciplines.  Neighborhood histories influence not only the way we look at our environment but the way we communicate with each other.  This communication is vital if we want to find ways to maintain and protect our cultural- heritage.  The example of Thurston Woods offers a framework for other neighborhoods to explore their physical environment.  Juxtaposing interactive digital media with our physical place allows scholarship to be embedded into our neighborhoods, producing news ways of seeing and engaging the world.  

Check out Neighborhood Histories at http://monicamfrost.wordpress.com/
Buy this book

Thurston Woods project week in review

Synthesis, production, critique, rinse and repeat: this week, the groups have been carefully crafting the documentaries on Thurston Woods. The process is akin to the art of collage making...snipping, cutting, pasting, and rearranging followed by further synthesis, reconsideration, and a somewhat pensive, but ultimately accepted replacement of information so that the picture is faithfully rendered, beautiful, and interesting.

Yes, we have been dotting our i's and crossing our t's and as we craft the documentaries bit by bit, the Thurston Woods community reveals itself.

As we move through the production process we've been able to rely on constructive critiques which allow us to see where we may have faltered with regards to our mission: physically, spatially, socially, historically defining "community" in Thurston Woods.

We have muddied our hands, we have taken our lumps, and the mission is almost complete. Huston : we don't have a problem
Stay tuned!

So Much Done, So Little Time

Everything is finally coming together.  When we started interviewing people I was worried that we would not have enough information to make a documentary.  I was completely wrong.  We have so much information; we don’t know what to do with it all.  Each group is doing one documentary.  If we had more time I would have enjoyed having each student do his or her own documentary; unfortunately the condensed schedule of the summer has limited us. 

My group has been working hard to remain focused on the commercial and retail spaces of Thurston woods.  There have been moments that I need to remind myself that we cannot include all the great stories we have come across.  Still, just because we do not use a clip does not mean it will go unused.  Interclipper has been a great tool, allowing us to share all our audio and notes with the other groups in class.  It is always exciting to find a new piece of audio you did not know existed.   

As our documentary changes, we continue to connect to forgotten pieces of not just Thurston Woods but the history of Milwaukee.  Comparing pictures of Silver Spring from the 1970s and now, you may not think it is the same place.  In our final week we hope to find some more historic photos of historic Thurston Woods.  We hope that we can reinforce the wonderful stories we have heard with some powerful images.  I really hope these projects shine a light on an overlooked part Milwaukee that I have been excited to learn about. 

I cannot get over how much work we have been able to achieve in such a short period of time.  I look forward to seeing what everyone creates in the final week of our class. 

Changing Aspirations

There is one thing I have learned over the past four weeks: This course is shaping my future.

I knew the course would add to my CV and give me experience in areas of Public History in which I had none, thus giving me an edge when looking for employment after December graduation. I am not sure whether I previously mentioned that I am focusing on archives and up until now have been looking for positions within the archivist field. My focus is now on other areas, such as completing oral interviews and working within the field for organizations. This change occurred at the latest BLC - Agape Center community event when Arijit told me I was really great at interviewing people.  I joked with Arijit that I could use my skill to work as a greeter at Wal-Mart, but know I can do so much more with it. 

I have always been one of those people who find it easy to talk to anyone, anywhere - even if it's just a quick, "How do you do?" I got that from my father, the most talkative man I know and am glad that I am able to be so friendly with people I don't even know. I am aspiring to work with a local organization that collects oral interviews and does historical work in the field. I have contacted Historic Milwaukee about completing an internship with them this fall and cannot wait to have the chance to widen my horizons some more.

It's amazing what this course has done to change my perceptions about working as a Public Historian/Archivist and ultimately how I viewed life after graduation. I have been looking for employment throughout the continental United States, and have been feeling down about possibly having to relocate myself and my children. I love the state of Wisconsin and all it has to offer us -- after all, I have lived here my entire life and would hate to pull myself away from family and friends. Now, I can start looking for employment at the local level within Milwaukee or even Madison for positions wherein I can use the tools this field school has given me. Thank you BLC, the WHC, and Professor Sen for giving me this opportunity!

The Past, A poem by Billy Collins

There is no doubt we all had one,
waist-deep as we are in the evidence of diaries,
home movies and strange names in old address books,
not to mention Architecture and Geology,
stone clocks that measure the deeper past.

And we have anecdotes, warped beyond recognition,
and a scar on the chin from a fall,
but nothing to compare with those few vivid moments
which are vivid for no reason at all --
a face at the children's party, or just a blue truck,
moments that have no role in any story,
worthless to a biographer, but mysterious
and rivaling the colors of the present.

Remembering them is like reading a poem
that begins by carrying us, zombie-like,
down basement stairs as if to leave us in the dark
feeling the air for a light cord,

but then a little metaphor begins to grow
with such details that is becomes a place,
a lake, for instance, cold and pine-bordered,
which we could dive into and feel nothing,
or a sunny white room where we could live
without ever having to be alive.

From The Apple That Astonished Paris: Poems by Billy Collins, (University of Arkansas Press, 2006)

Stories we tell: Community, Nature and Home

Have Ithaca always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
…

Ithaca gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

                        "Ithaca" by C V Cavafy

There is an eternal story that shines bright. It is the story of coming home. Poet Constantine Cavafy wrote of Ithaca, that mythic home we all yearn for. We strive to belong.

As we pack our bags to leave Thurston Woods are we are ready to go home? What did this journey teach us? Our stories neatly fall under three major categories: Home, Nature and Community. In each story we have accounts of individuals striving to belong in each of the above domains.

We have stories of homes and homemakers. We exchange stories of owners, renters and developers crafting their abode, thoughtfully decorating the front rooms with careful mouldings; extending the front porch or the dormers beyond their original boundaries. We remember proud homeowners decorating their front rooms and bedrooms with furnishings and mothers surrounding their world with portraits of their families, now dispersed far and wide. We photograph yard ornaments - plastic deer, woodcut flowers and Thurston Woods flags - marking spots that residents love and claim as their own. Home is more than the nuts, bolts, joists and joints that define a shelter. It is a symbolic space of ownership, love, memories and tears. It grounds residents to a piece of land and a lifetime of memories.

Then there is that elusive community residents want to belong. Some fondly tell tales of a past long gone. Streets full of friends. Safe. Familiar. And now lost forever. The tales of loss are tales of past belongings. They are laments of a world that has changed irreversibly. Of friends who are dead, families now dispersed, and neighbors gone. But they are also tales that reflect fear of the other, the unfamiliar, and the unhomely, slowly creeping up the street onto one’s doorstep. They are tales of taming that new neighbor, the young rowdy renter, the loud teenager or alien cultures cluttering the alleyways. These stories remind us that our community changes everyday and we have to constantly remake ourselves in order to belong in this ever-changing world. Many residents told us how their community has transformed from a tight knit neighborhood where one could walk to do their everyday chores into a new world that requires a long car ride in order to get to a friend's house or to Sunday services. Speaking of this new and dispersed community, their stories are punctuated with a wistful nostalgic moment of longing for the times when things were different. But whether these are stories of loss or reunion, discovery and nascent beginnings, they are all accounts of becoming part of a community larger than oneself.  

But we are also part of an even larger world we call home. This world is made of plants, animals, sun, wind, and water. We mow our lawns, keep off the weeds, and tend our kitchen gardens. But the weeds are unrelenting. They spread outside our yards into the sidewalks and back alleys. After an afternoon of heavy thunderstorms we hear streams of rainwater overflowing across the yard into the rivulets along the dip along the alleyways. The distant rainbow marks the green canopy of Havenwoods State forest. Residents walk their dogs in the dog parks and children play in the neighborhood greens. A small plot next to the Agape center is boarded off as a community garden. We are at home in this world of beauty and love, fearful of nature’s might and destructive power, obsessive about our relationship to this huge ecosystem. Nature is not something outside us – it is what we make and remake everyday and it is that larger home where we belong as a community.

As we pack up our measuring tapes and interview recorders we realize that our stay here made us part of Thurston Woods. We belong to this landscape of homes, community and nature. Being part of this world is irreversible. 

Development as a way to deal with nostalgia.

Imagine your childhood home. Though possibly basic as far as its architecture, our childhood homes contain an array of memories of a much simpler time in our lives. What if the place we once called home was in a state of decay--forgotten by developers? during our neighborhood walk, Haak guided me to the very first place he and his family lived in when they came to Thurston Woods in 1992. As seen in the pictures below, the building is in derelict condition. As a person who must criss-cross the neighborhood several times for work, Haak must see this building on a daily basis; unable to do anything to change the state of the building. Though attached to the building itself, Haak would much rather see it being turned into a YMCA or some sort of building which could give kids a safe place to go to when they wanna to get away. As a member of the community, Haak show us a way to deal with nostalgia by giving the community a piece of architecture it could truly benefit from. Factually, many of Thurston Woods' kids must now be bused to schools closer to the core of Milwaukee. Giving the kids a space in which they could study, exercise and socialize would give the kids the after school experience they deserve in their own community.

Thurston Woods Project Week in Review

This last past week, the pressure to produce something truly meaningful has weighed on my mind. This is not particularly scholarly pressure, but rather a pressure that comes when meeting really great people and the desire to please them and portray them fairly. I am confidant we are on the right path. We started the week off with UWM professor Jasmine Alinder who helped us understand and interpret the seemingly common place: photos. Vernacular photography, or photos snapped of quotidian life like birthdays, weddings, summer vacations and the like, represent something more than mere figuration. photographs act as relics or repositories of memory. The objects represented in them are symbols of time, place, and emotional attachment for the owner and as documentary evidence of time, place, and social and cultural construction for the historian. Applying this information to the wall of photos in Jean's home (first interviewee), the significance of photography becomes clear. Both the significance the photos hold for her and the contextual significance they hold as an historic document. Arrangement of these photos created further meaning. Photos of family members graced the walls of her bedroom creating an inner, private place, an inner sanctum of memory.  As an outsider, the photos told us what was important to Jean, where she's been, and who she'd been there with. the placement of these photos was also very interesting and represented physically the way that Jean thought or remembered spatially in our interviews. That being from early to later; photos were arranged in pairs representing an earlier (younger) image and a later (older) image. This thought process was repeated in the interview, revealing earlier places/spaces/businesses and later (or existing) places/spaces/businesses. However the pressure of putting together a project that Would highlight these personal nuances and by extension the nuances of the Thurston Woods community persisted. It wasn't  enough  to understand representation; we had to understand how to present the information we gathered. Enter Erin Dorbin, documentary expert. In the second portion of the week, we worked on placing our audio files into Reaper, an editing program, and seamlessly lacing together the finest portions of our interviews. Needless to say, my anxiety to construct something beautiful and meaningful for the Thurston Woods community, somewhat subsided With the help of both Jasmine and Erin. thank you. More to come next week : stay tuned!

BLC Community BBQ... With Pizza

BLC Pizza BBQ in less than 30 seconds... Ready, Set, Go!

Pizza Barbeque

Little kids kicking a ball around, beautiful weather, and great food.  While some people may not consider pizza part of a barbeque, it made for a great day to get to know some new people in Thurston Woods. 

We were fortunate enough to find a shady area on the north side of the Agape center to set up food and drinks for our “Barbeque” on the 30^th.  Sitting in the shade we were able to enjoy the breeze and share some food while talking about the history of the community.  It was a very relaxed atmosphere, more like a party than schoolwork. 

There was a slow turn out at first, but it was nice to see some new faces as well as some familiar ones.  Jean Dublin showed up with her sister and niece.  My group had interviewed Jean and measured her house for our project.  I had heard so many wonderful stories about her family, and it was nice to finally put a face to the name.   Jean and hey twin sister came wearing matching dresses, with the exception of a little rickrack along the neckline of one of the dresses. 

It did not take long for Jean to get into story telling mode.  And as usual the group was captivated by her energy and wit.  As children ran around us, Jean described how alive with activity she remembered Berryland.  While the promise of food may have drawn people to visit, many of them stayed to share their stories. 

I felt more connected to Thurston woods after our Barbeque.  During previous events I felt like a nuisance at times, bothering people that did not want to be talked to..  But this community event was a very positive experience that left me feeling hopefully about coming back. 

Willy Wonka and the BLC Field School

Willy Wonka: Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?

We are probably entering the most important part of our intellectual journey. Pouring over hours of audio footage, peeking and squinting into the blue lines of the computer screen, distinguishing between guidelines and wall lines in autoCAD drawings, and playing with the documentary software - we are dreaming new worlds, composing new stories. We are music makers and dreamers. Yet that process of telling stories – choosing one from the many stories – makes the task difficult and awesome.

In the seventies Hayden White wrote about the art of writing histories. He argued that historiography is a poetic exercise in emplotment. Historians plot stories; they highlight certain aspects of it and downplay others. They explain change and interpret life in particular ways. Histories follow certain underlining and prefigured narrative structures within which we understand, read and reproduce our reality. Shakespeare gets retold by Willy Wonka - and by us too - during myriad banal moments. Yet, each story, told differently, bent and crooked, follows some basic logic. History repeats itself in its telling; over and over, year after year.

Telling stories is so important because our stories spawn new ones. Imagine that slight breeze that fleets through a grove of trees on a sleepy sunny afternoon. As the breeze passes by, branches tremble, leaves shimmer, and the silent world around us shifts in tremulous apprehension. We feel it. We awake from our languorous stupor, out of our afternoon siesta and we know that the evening is right around the corner. We know the drill that follows. That slight breeze awakens us from dreams into everyday banality.  We have to get up and get back to work. That is what our stories do. They gently arrive and wake us up, reminding us of the world in which we belong and they encourage us to act.

Single stories kill conversations. That is why I don’t care about the social scientist’s obsession for validity and generalizability. They seek to speak for everyone, complete, comprehensive and sweeping. Their stories have no place for go-betweens and tricksters except in the box titled “deviants.” The careful craft of a storyteller emphasizes leaving loose ends. Loose ends let your mind soar like a kite and then they set us free. The story, like a kite, flies on, its string limply dangling from the sky, daring us to catch it and pin it down - waving, twisting and turning into the distant horizon till we can see it no more. Some come crashing down on us; into a still and silent moment of utter sadness.

Stories have real power and as we ponder over the mines of digital data, our minds soar into the world of stories. We pick and choose, bite and spit, remember and remind. We have to do a good job – walk that tightrope – not too tight not too loose. Just enough to make space for the next story to snuggle up to us and change our tale in unpredictable ways. 

“I only heard about race when I came up here” Reflecting on Haakaam Pascal's Interview

“I didn’t grow up on race see, everyone was one color to me, red—or just human. You go two legs? you’re human enough for me, I don’t care about your color. You talk? Oh I Talk too! That’s all I cared about back in the Caribbean days; I only heard about race when I came up here”

Haakaam, aka Haak raises a very important issue regarding identity within a majority which may  be of the same skin color as one's self. Being of African descent from the Caribbean, Haak may have looked of the same ethnic background as other individuals living in Thurston Woods. Nevertheless, Haak had a hard time belonging to this larger group of African Americans because of his inability to speak English. He mentions that he only heard about race after coming to the U.S. 

Being an immigrant myself, I understood the idea of not being a part of a collective of people that may be considered part of your same race/ethnic group. Back in my ESL days it was hard to fit in with the Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and other individuals due to my Colombian accent and my height. Like Haak I did feel out of place since I did not feel a sense of belonging to the Latino population. At the same time, I was told constantly by surveys that race was a check-box away; and I was not "White" either, though Latinos are advised to mark "White" as our race and "Latino/Hispanic" as our ethnic group. I understand the need for these methods but perhaps, as we see with Haak, they may be more diving than we think. 

In Which a Field School Participant Has a Brief Existential Crisis

In the third week of the field school we have arrived at the subatomic level of Thurston Woods. We have left the comfortable domain of the humanities and entered the domain of quantum mechanics. One of the most basic notions in the field of quantum physics is that the act of watching and observing affects the outcome of the object of study. How much then has our activity been like that of the quantum physicist. We take our tools out into the field and point them at the subjects hoping to get good results. 

We hope see things as if we weren't there; we want to see the neighborhood as it really is and people as they really are. But this never happens, how could it? We know well that people who know they are being observed will consciously and unconsciously alter their behaviors. If only we could throw on our invisibility cloaks and make our measurements out of sight. There is no two way mirror that looks out onto the neighborhood. When you gaze out the windows which overlook the gym at the Agape Center you can expect a wave back. 

What are we looking for? What is it that we are hoping to find and are we only finding what we think we’ll find? How can you find something if you don’t already know what you’re going to find? What exactly is it that we are doing here? Are we trying to develop a neighborhood profile? Are we trying to develop a neighborhood history?

Thurston Woods is real, it is “out there,” it is the people that live and work here, the homes that they live in, the change over time. But how much of Thurston Woods as we define it existed prior to our work, and how much of it being created by our observations? As we get deeper into this project I’m often stuck with the thought that Thurston Wood proper is a creation of our less than clever academic imaginations.

The neighborhood with the name Thurston Woods is not something everyone knows about, not even all those who live there. We approach homes with people on the porches seeking refuge from the summer heat trapped inside their homes. “We’re interested in hearing your stories about Thurston Woods.” The response, “Thurston Woods, where’s that?” The boundaries that someone somewhere at some time had set gave me the notion we were standing in it. The neat little outline I saw on Google Maps gave me the notion everyone would know the neighborhood.

Then there are those who disagree with the boundaries laid out on the neat little brochure which can be found at the Agape Center. “Well they added all of this over here, that isn’t really Thurston Woods. This small area over here is the real Thurston Woods.” How much space can be taken away or added on and still be Thurston Woods?

What does it mean for this area we delineate as Thurston Woods to be Thurston Woods? After all it’s just a name and imaginary lines which correspond more or less to the four major thoroughfares and all the stuff, good and bad, held between these lines. Is there anything besides proximity that ties all of this stuff between the lines together? Most certainly. Just like any other place this is a place with history. The old timer home owners remember fondly the big trees that lined the streets and shaded the backyards. They recall the opposition of homeowners to the placement of sidewalks that would remove ancient trees. They lament change. They are most noticeably pained by the loss of the tree coverage. Each can relate a particularly painful story of a favorite old tree coming down.

Regardless of any doubts which are held in our minds or fall from our lips we continue on fastidiously with our work. Forward ever, backward never. Collecting; collating; ordering; editing. The data piles up over our heads laid down like geological layers marking the eons. (June 11^th feels like one hundred years in the past.) A growing mass of ones and zeros, digital data, stored on hard drives and servers. The measurements of homes and their translation into Autocad drawings. The photographs of people, their places, and their things. Computer scans of home plans and deeds. The recordings of voices, memories, hopes, dreams, complaints, and the wisdoms of youth and age. With close enough scrutiny of this agglomeration of data we will learn something about Thurston Woods. In this I am confident.