Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 24, 2004|Volume 33, Number 4

An image from a publicity poster for the two-day symposium, which will bring noted urban and architectural historians, authors and others to campus to discuss how the global landscape has changed.

Symposium to explore past
and future of suburbanization

Noted urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson will be among the scholars participating in a two-day symposium on campus exploring suburbanization in the United States and beyond.

The event, titled "The Suburban Frontier," is the fourth annual symposium of the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders. It will take place Friday and Saturday, Oct. 1 and 2.

Jackson, considered "the dean of American urban historians," will deliver the keynote address on Friday at 5:15 p.m. in the auditorium of the Whitney Humanities Center (WHC), 53 Wall St. His talk, titled "The Road to Hell: Sustainability and Suburban Borders in the 21st Century," will focus on the future of suburbanization by way of understanding its past. Although suburbanization is widely thought to be a post-World War II phenomenon, the movement to the suburban periphery or "frontier" began even as Americans were making their way westward along the Oregon Trail, symposium organizers note.

Following Jackson's address, the Yale Collection of Western Americana and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will host a public reception at the WHC.

Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University. He is the editor of the bestselling "Encyclopedia of New York City," published in 1995 by Yale University Press, and the author of "Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States" (1985), which has been reprinted five times in hardback and 22 times in paperback. His other books include "The Ku Klux Klan in the City" (1967) and "Cities in American History" (with Stanley K. Schultz, 1972). He was the editor-in-chief of the "Dictionary of American Biography" (1990-1995), and is now the editor-in-chief of the "Scribner's Encyclopedia of American Lives." He is the general editor of the Columbia History of Urban Life series.

The historian is well known for his knowledge of the back streets and neighborhoods of New York City, where he has been leading all-night bike rides, three-hour walking tours and all-day bus trips for decades. He the former president of the New York Historical Society and has been a featured guest on NBC's "Today Show," ABC's "Nightline," CNN, the History Channel and over a dozen documentaries. He has been a guest of former President Bill Clinton at the White House and of Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, and has also been honored with the Society of Columbia Graduates' annual Great Teacher Award. He was ranked as one of the most popular professors in the nation by Playboy magazine in 1993.

On Saturday at 9 a.m. in Rm. 208, WHC, a panel of scholars will respond to Jackson's talk, broadening the discussion to include observations on suburbanization in North America and all over the world. The panelists include Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and of American studies at Yale; Adam Rome of Pennsylvania State University and editor of the journal Environmental History; David Czitrom of Mount Holyoke College; and Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jay Gitlin, a lecturer in history and associate director of the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, will serve as the moderator.

An urban historian and an architect, Hayden's most recent books are "Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000" and "A Field Guide to Sprawl." Her other award-winning books include "The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities" and "The Power of Place."

Rome, a graduate of Yale College and a Rhodes Scholar, is the author of "The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism," which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize and the Lewis Mumford Prize.

Czitrom is the author of "Media and the American Mind" and the forthcoming "Rediscovering Jacob Riis" (with Bonnie Yochelson). He is currently writing "Mysteries of the City: Politics, Culture and New York's Underworld in Turn-of-the-Century America."

Bruegmann, considered one of the nation's foremost architectural historians and an expert on global suburbanization, is the author of the prize-winning book "The Architects and the City: Holabird and Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918" and the forthcoming "A Compact History of Sprawl."

Gitlin was the first recipient of the Richard Brodhead Prize for excellence as a lecturer in Yale College. He is currently preparing a documentary history of suburbanization and has served as an on-camera commentator and consultant for Connecticut Public Television's "Suburbia: The Good Life in Connecticut?" which was nominated for a regional Emmy Award in 1997.

All conference events are free and open to the public. For further information, call Edith Rotkopf at (203) 432-2328 or visit the Lamar Center website at www.yale.edu/lamarcenter.

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IN MEMORIAM