Online Publications
Perspectives on Garden Histories
edited by Michel Conan
Garden history is a discipline of contested purposes. Perspectives on Garden Histories contributes to a self-critical examination of this emergent field of study, at the same time offering an overview of its main achievements in several domains-such as Italian and Mughal gardens-and of the new kinds of investigation to which they have led.
In its early years garden history centered on architectural studies of garden design, but in the 1960s the emphasis shifted from garden design to garden meaning. The new paradigm considered gardens as complex works of art and demanded an extensive documentation of the historical context as well as of the figurative and discursive sources. This approach, in its turn, was challenged by neo-Marxist scholars who proceeded to view landscape appreciation as an ideological superstructure, an outgrowth of agricultural production processes.
Garden designs and their histories can also be viewed as expressions of ideological conflicts in society. Neither gardens nor their history can thus be studied independently of the social, cultural, and political movements that give prominence to the contested ideologies. Gardens can be used to foster some ideologies or reflect a reaction against a social change.
Comparative research offers another fascinating approach, exploring the relations between European landscape concepts and other cultural contexts and discussing issues of cultural dominance and interpretation.
The emergence of various perspectives has led to the incorporation of further questions into the domain of garden studies, which has been moving in new directions and using new methods in search of an adapted theoretical framework. This volume offers a striking view of changes taking place in the discipline.
Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, 21
1999 240 pages 55 illus. 7 x 10 inches 0-88402-265-X (cloth) $35.00, 0-88402-269-2 (paper) $20.00, order
Electronic texts
- Introduction, Michel Conan
- Prelude: Landscape Studies, 1952–1972, Elisabeth Blair MacDougall
- The Study of the History of the Italian Garden until the First Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, David R. Coffin
- Recent Developments and Perspectives in the Historiography of Italian Gardens, Mirka Benes
- Approaches (New and Old) to Garden History, John Dixon Hunt
- History and Historiography in the English Landscape Garden, Michael Leslie
- Mughal Gardens: The Re-emergence of Comparative Possibilities and the Wavering of Practical Concern, James L. Wescoat Jr.
- "Leaping the Property Line": Observations on Recent American Garden History, Kenneth Helphand
- The Search for "Ecological Goodness" among Garden Historians, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn
- From Vernacular Gardens to a Social Anthropology of Gardening, Michel Conan
- Longing and Belonging in Chinese Garden History, Stanislaus Fung
- Contributors
- Index