Landscape and the Academy Hardcover by John Beardsley

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (2019-05-14)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 360 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780884024545
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

Universities are custodians of some of the most significant designed landscapes in the world.

The planning of the academic campus has historically underscored the relationship between an institution’s faculty and its students. The campus creates spaces for sharing traditions and reinforces the aspirations of a community of learning that stewards knowledge, provokes reflection, and shapes citizenship. Landscape and the Academy complements the growing body of literature in architectural history, cultural geography, and education by examining the role of landscape in creating academic communities.

The volume looks beyond the central campus, to the gardens, arboreta, farms, forests, biotic reserves, and far-flung environmental research stations managed by universities. In these landscapes, the university’s project of fostering research and exploration is made explicit; these spaces reflect the broader research and scholarly mission of the university, its striving for understanding and enlightenment. The essays examine how and why universities have come to be responsible for so many different kinds of landscapes, as well as the role these landscapes play in academic life, pedagogy, and cultural politics today.

About the Author

John Beardsley is Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Daniel Bluestone is Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Director of the Preservation Studies Program, American and New England Studies Program (AMNESP), at Boston University.