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Description
Whenever I tell people that my research deals with the history of summer camps, they smile. Undoubtedly some of the smiles are triggered by fond camp memories: the smell of pine, perhaps, or the taste of s'mores. But sometimes (I suspect) the smiles serve to hide a certain amount of confusion about what summer camps have to do with architectural history. If we are thinking of the most conventional definition of the field--a history of innovative works designed by architects of genius--then that confusion is warranted. This is not to say that architects have never designed summer camps. They have--they do--often producing buildings of some quality. But if we are primarily interested in documenting cutting edge experiments in aesthetic theory, Camp Lakamaga--an exemplary Girl Scout camp in eastern Minnesota--would not be our first stop.
My interest in summer camps grows from a different vision of architectural history, particularly a conviction that we can do more with the methods of architectural history than simply trace the workings of genius. On one hand, I believe that we can look seriously at a wider range of buildings, including the mundane, run-of-the-mill buildings that scholars in my field call vernacular architecture. On the other--and for me, this is the more important point--we can also elicit more from all kinds of buildings. Instead of interpreting buildings solely in light of the architect's interests and aptitudes, we can also glean from them new insights into the cultural aspirations and institutional priorities that caused them to be built in the first place.
Commonplace social institutions are of particular interest, their numbers alone suggesting their importance to the many people who invested time and effort in seeing them built. Ultimately, my goal is to see what buildings and their larger settings--what we call the cultural landscape--can tell us about human society that we might not grasp as fully if we limited ourselves to the written record.
Camps fit well within this framework. They are commonplace institutions that sprouted up in growing numbers since camps were first established in the 1880s. The American Camp Association (ACA) currently accredits more than 2,400 camps and at least 1,700 of which are residential camps--the focus of my study--although ACA also estimates that only about 25 percent of camps seek accreditation.... |
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