Michigan Technological University’s Department of Social Sciences will offer a field school in vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes this summer. The course, Barns and Beaches: People and Landscapes of Southern Houghton County, is a 3-credit hour immersive course open to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Join us along the shores of beautiful Lake Superior for an experience like no other!
Students will study cultural landscapes through multiple disciplines including history, folklore, and more. They will do community-engaged field research investigating Finnish American agriculture, logging, and vacation landscapes.
The course experience will include one week camping at a field site in the Finnish logging and farming village of Toivola on the shore of Lake Superior where we will engage in historic site documentation, digital modeling, and oral history and ethnographic interviewing. Work produced during this field school will be used in the guidebook for the 2024 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference which will take place at Michigan Technological University in Houghton and the surrounding area.
The course will be co-taught by material culture specialist Dr. Sarah Fayen Scarlett (MTU), folklorist Dr. Hilary Virtanen (Nordic Studies, Finlandia University) and Dr. John Arnold (Historical Architect, Keweenaw National Historical Park). Students may enroll in either SS5800: Documentation or Historic Structures or SS4990: Special Topics in American History. The registration deadline is March 15, 2022.
For more information, contact Dr. Scarlett at sfscarle@mtu.edu.