Recent Faculty Publications

Recent books and other publications authored or edited by members of the faculty reflect the range and diversity of academic perspectives encompassed by the Department of Landscape Architecture.


		Islamic Gardens and Landscapes D. Fairchild Ruggles University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008 Islamic Gardens and Landscapes immerses the reader in the world of the architects of the great gardens of the Islamic world, from the seventh century to the present. Western admirers have long seen the Islamic garden as an earthly reflection of the paradise said to await the faithful. However, such simplification denies the sophistication and diversity of the art form. Islamic gardens began from the practical need to organize the surrounding space of human civilization, tame nature, enhance the earth's yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. With thematic chapters followed by an encyclopedia of sites, copiously illustrated with photographs and plans, the book follows the evolution of these early farming efforts to their aristocratic apex in famous formal gardens of the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in Agra.

		Cultural Heritage and Human Rights Edited by Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild Ruggles Springer, 2007 This first volume in the Cultural Heritage in a Globalized World series addresses a deeply political aspect of heritage preservation and management as it relates to human rights. Social and community advocates contend that heritage is necessary for the articulation and preservation of cultural identity. The display of heritage monuments and performance can be a strategy for asserting minority identity in the face of majority pressure as well as a tool for resistance and the expression of difference. Conversely, as recent wartime destruction has shown, the erasure of cultural expressions can be a powerful tool in warfare and political regulation. For these reasons, human rights are a critical issue in heritage studies.

		Political Economies of Landscape Change Edited by James J. Wescoat, Jr. and Douglas M. Johnston Springer, 2007 This book encompasses perspectives ranging from radical landscape interpretation to sustainable livelihoods, real estate economics, institutions, international landscape policies, and global finance. It asks what difference "design" can make within the broader structural contexts of landscape change in the 21st century.

		Design, Planning, and Management of the Land Landscape Journal Volume 26, Number 1 Guest edited by Dianne Harris Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 The articles in this special issue of Landscape Journal examine the relationships between the built form of the environment, the social construction of race, and minoritization in the United States. In addition to an introductory essay by Harris, the journal also features articles by Department of Landscape Architecture Faculty members Rebecca Ginsburg and Laura Lawson.

		Native Plants and Communities of East Central Illinois: University of Illinois Source Book October, 2007 This downloadable sourcebook and Excel spreadsheet combine three prior publications. Included are: Native Plants at the University of Illinois Campus by James and Florrie Wescoat with Yung-Ching Lin, Landscape Architecture Department, University of Illinois Considerations Regarding Landscaping with Natives by Kenneth R. Robertson, Illinois Natural History Survey Native Plants of East Central Illinois and Their Preferred Locations by John Taft, Illinois Natural History Survey

		Sites Unseen : Landscape and Vision Edited by Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007 Sites Unseen challenges conventions for viewing and interpreting the landscape, using visual theory to move beyond traditional practices of describing and classifying objects to explore notions of audience and context. While other fields, such as art history and geography, have engaged poststructuralist theory to consider vision and representation, the application of such inquiry to the natural or built environment has lagged behind. This book, by treating landscape as a spatial, psychological, and sensory encounter, aims to bridge this gap, opening a new dialogue for discussing the landscape outside the boundaries of current art criticism and theory. As the contributors reveal, the landscape is a widely adaptable medium that can be employed literally or metaphorically to convey personal or institutional ideologies.

		Landscapes in India : Forms and Meanings Amita Sinha University Press of Colorado, 2006 Landscapes can be read like languages, as arrangements of symbols that reveal cultural values. South Asian landscapes—rich with formalized symbols, from the Cosmic Tree in sacred groves to cities patterned on mandalas—are expressive of archetypes universal to humankind and externalize deeply felt emotions of social kinship and relationship with the divine. This book explores the interface between nature, culture, and the built landscape by tracing the meaning of archetypal symbols in Indic mythology, ritual space, and contemporary design practice.

		City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America Laura Lawson University of California Press, 2005 Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens--each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. The book focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs.

		Maybeck's Landscapes: Drawing in Nature Dianne Harris William Stout, 2005 This book examines Maybeck's ideas about landscape--here taken to include his garden designs as well as his grand landscape schemes for sites such as Twin Peaks in San Francisco. Maybeck produced stunning and at times gigantic pastel drawings, many of which are reproduced here in color.

For more information, visit the 306090 website at: www.306090.org. 306090 is distributed by Princeton Architectural Press and is also available through major booksellers. To purchase, visit: www.papress.com.		306090 07 Landscape within Architecture David L. Hays, Editor 306090 07: Landscape within Architecture (Fall 2004) explores the place of landscape within architectural education and its impact on the work of emerging theorists and designers. In recent years, ideas of landscape have assumed an unprecedented importance in discourses about architecture. Architects have turned to landscape in search of new approaches, strategies, practices, and techniques. How have academic programs in architecture addressed the new interests in landscape? How have those initiatives informed the work of students and recent graduates? In what ways have landscape architects been involved? 306090 07 brings together twenty-five essays by thirty-one contributors-administrators, professors, and students-representing twenty-two public and private universities in the United States and Canada. The volume offers a cross-section of contemporary arguments and approaches chosen for their diversity in addressing the common theme. Support for 306090 07 has been generously provided by the Wadsworth Endowment Grant in the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

		Water for Life: Water management and Environmental Policy James L. Wescoat, Jr. and Gilbert F. White Cambridge University Press, 2003 Successful water management is crucial for the proper operation of natural environmental systems and for the support of human society. These two aspects are interdependent, but decisions about one are often made without regard to effects upon the other. A persistent challenge is to consider them together. This book is the first to explore fully the relationship between water management, environmental conditions, and public policy. It combines a careful review of the character and evolution of water management and evaluates management from the standpoint of the quality of the natural environment. Topics covered include domestic and industrial water supply and waste disposal, groundwater use, river channel and floodplain management, and integrated river basins. The processes of social decision-making are examined against a backdrop of plant-soil-water-ecosystem relationships and ecosystem change. Examples are drawn from around the world, from local watershed management to international river basin planning, with emphasis on integrative approaches.

		The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in 18th-Century Lombardy Dianne Harris Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003 This book presents a view of villa life as it developed during the 18th century on the vast estates dominating the fertile plain around Milan. Then governed from Vienna by a Habsburg regime bent on increased tax revenues, the great landowning families lived lives fraught with tensions and contradictions as they found themselves as colonized. The Nature of Authority employs a uniquely interdisciplinary method to trace the mingling of enlightened reform and a culture of display in the design and functioning of villas and villa life in eighteenth-century Lombardy. Through the examination of diverse forms of evidence, the book reveals how villas served as centers of complex sociopolitical and cultural transactions that fashioned a landscape, which was at once a beguiling vista and a tool in the enforcement of a strict hierarchy of use and value.

		Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France Edited by Mirka Benes and Dianne Harris Cambridge University Press, 2001 This edited volume focuses on selected villas and their gardens in France and Italy from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Essays by Mirka Benes, Dianne Harris, Claudia Lazzaro, Suzanne Butters, Tracy Ehrlich, Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, Sheila ffolliott, Elizabeth Hyde, Chandra Mukerji, Hilary Ballon, and David Hays examine these landscapes within the context of the history, culture, and politics of the time.

		Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain D. Fairchild Ruggles Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000 Gardens, Landscape, and Vision is divided into three parts: landscape and agricultural transformation as documented in the medieval Arabic scientific literature and geographies, the typological formation of the garden and its symbolic meaning in the eighth through tenth centuries, and finally the role of vision and framing in the apparatus of sovereignty from Madinat al-Zahra' to the Alhambra. In a 2002 review, Maria Menocal wrote, " Ruggles' always clear narrative interweaves all the fundamental threads of the historical and political events necessary to fully appreciate the cultural bases of everything that had to do with that dramatic transformation of the Iberian landscape. She seems as at home talking about the changing yields of crop harvests as about the variations in the concepts of paradise as a garden across different cultures and, as a result... she provides a sweeping picture of the 'Natural' world that was so carefully engineered in al-Andalus."

		Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies Edited by D. Fairchild Ruggles SUNY Press, 2000 The essays in this book examine occasions when Muslim women from the twelfth century to the present took the stance of viewer, writer, performer or patron of art and literature. They explore the means of female empowerment, ascribing it to genealogical ties, the birth of male heirs, financial independence and the right to inheritance mandated by Islamic law, education, celibacy, and voice (which is dependent on the other categories). Some essays explore the limits to female agency in a world where the public social institutions were run by men; others focus on the rise of self-conscious feminism in the modern world and the active participation of women in public discourse and social institutions. The book includes contributions from Ellison Findly, Elizabeth Brown Frierson, Salah M. Hassan, Nancy Micklewright, Leslie Peirce, Kishwar Rizvi, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Yasser Tabbaa, Lucienne Thys-Senocak, and Ethel Sara Wolper.