the poster for our December 3 Music Video "World Premiere"

I was so happy to learn that the students are okay with using the above image by Caleb McCants, a student in the class, for the poster promoting our music video (the Faculty Resource Center's design staff did an amazing job on this). They all took terrific photographs unveiling the tensions between America's (and Tuscaloosa's) urban and rural past and present. Some of those images will be displayed December 3 at Jemison Mansion during a small reception before the video launch. Again, we thank Ian Crawford at Jemison for this opportunity. And of course, we thank Bible Study, a local band, for allowing us to visually interpret their wonderful tune "Druid City."

Jasmine Wells, a Public Relations major at UA (and the person unknowingly featured in the photo which was taken during our recent downtown tour and creates room to push our thinking about the "public feminine" as defined by Gunther Barth and others), is helping with publicity. She even made a Facebook page. Ben Smith, who works in technology for the Athletic Department, has threatened to remaster my edited video. I welcome his skills.

On other fronts, yesterday we discussed Clarence King and Ada Copeland's relationship in New York City during the Gilded Age as presented in Martha Sandweiss' study. We pondered black-white interactions in and outside of the urban space by watching a good part of Muscle Shoals, a documentary highlighting the white musicians who played behind many African American singers in the 1960s and early 1970s. Next week, we will continue this conversation by bringing the urban space into fuller view although in the context of Dublin, Ireland, via the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments.

I am vigilant about historicizing black-white encounters and pushing the students to do the same. What happened in 19th century New York that couldn't or could happen in 1960s rural Alabama or 1980s Dublin (or 1863 New York for that matter) when it comes to how black and white bodies come together - and part?

Finally, I just received the best news. Dr. Robert Mellown, a recently retired, but ever-busy UA Professor of Art History will be our guest speaker at the Dec. 3 music video launch at Jemison Mansion. We are truly honored to hear him discuss his efforts to aid the restoration of local structures including Jemison and Bryce Hospital. He will sign copies of The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture (University of Alabama Press, 2013) at this event.

on columns and divided space

The temps are now in the 90s  in Tuscaloosa. Daily walks are best taken on the indoor track at the Rec Center. But two weeks ago, before it got too hot, my husband and I took a stroll around campus. It was then I got this photograph of Frat Row. The columns are always striking to me.

I never noticed columns on buildings the way I do now before I moved to Alabama. They are everywhere. During trips to the beach, I see them on everything from community college campuses to Publix. Last week, while at the beach, I even saw them in Big Fish, a  restaurant in a strip shopping center (I had outstanding Scottish salmon prepared "Big-Fish" style;my husband had yummy crabcakes).

Big Fish, an Orange Beach, Alabama, restaurant. 

I am reminded of what Gunther Barth has to say about how architecture fits into the efforts of human beings to create visual harmony. And whether on Gothic, Neo-Gothic or Greek Revival-styled buildings on college campus buildings or elsewhere,  pillars seem to represent something huge literally and figuratively. Regarding the latter, they represent how people look to the past as inspiration for their aspirations. This was definitely true during emerging urban life in antebellum America.

But I really like this idea of visual harmony, which is what planners of modern cities tried to create by dividing space via, among other things, the gridiron street system. In such a system, streets form a grid by running at right angles. Harmony was also created in how people organized, as Barth has written, "distinct areas of work, residence, and leisure." Early businesses found many proprietors living upstairs, but that increasingly changed (although with gentrification, some of those old ways are coming back. I have a friend whose family owned a restaurant in a happening part of a big city and his sister lived upstairs above it).

The idea of space in emerging urban life is one of the topics I will address this fall with students enrolled in this course. In the meantime, I will keep thinking it all over as I keep getting to know the campus and, indeed, Tuscaloosa. I have been here for more than two years, but am still learning my way around. The numbered grid streets are helpful.

finally...the movie poster

It arrived today from the university's printing department. Yay!