Architectural History

Offered in:

SAVANNAH

Savannah

• 
  Jeffrey Eley
  Savannah
  B.F.A., Virginia Commonwealth University; M.Arch.Hist., University of Virginia.
  Show bio

  Jeff Eley specializes in modern architecture in Europe and the United States, as well as colonial architecture in the United States. His areas of interest include domestic architecture and interiors of England from the Renaissance through the mid-19th century as well as the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetics movements. He has taught at SCAD since 1983 and has also served as the director of off-campus programs, dean of international studies, vice president for student services (1997-2000) and vice president for academic services (2000-05). Eley serves on the Georgia National Register Review Board for the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

  
  
  
  
• 
  Thomas Gensheimer
  Savannah
  B.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
  Show bio

  Thomas Gensheimer, Ph.D., teaches courses in non-Western architecture, with specializations in the art and architecture of Africa and the Islamic world. As an undergraduate anthropology student, he worked on archaeological excavations at the colonial plantation of Flowerdew Hundred in Virginia and in the ancient Indus Valley city of Harappa in Pakistan. He has published articles on shell trading between Mesopotamia and the ancient Indus Valley civilization. He also has conducted research on Swahili architecture and cities as a Fulbright scholar in Kenya, and has lectured and published articles on the urban history of the medieval East African coast. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and was a member of the first group of foreign travelers permitted to cross the Khunjerab Pass from Northern Pakistan to Xinjiang via the Karakoram highway. His current work focuses on African urban form and design, and European representations of African cities.

  
  
  
  
• 
  David Gobel
  Savannah
  B.Arch., Texas Tech University; M.A., Princeton University; M.Arch.Hist., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Princeton University.
  Show bio

  David Gobel, Ph.D., teaches courses in Renaissance and Baroque architecture, 20th-century architecture, urban form, theory and criticism, and garden and villa architecture. He has received several awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright-Hays/Spanish government fellowship for study in Spain. With department chair Robin Williams, he founded the biennial Savannah Symposium and has co-directed several of the symposia. He served as co-editor of ARRIS: The Journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and has also edited journals at the University of Virginia and Princeton University. Gobel is an active member of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and served as president from 2005-07. His research areas include 16th-century urbanism in Spain, the theoretical writings of Philibert de l'Orme, the architecture of the Protestant Reformation, and the urban plan of Savannah.

  
  
  
  
• 
  Celeste Lovette Guichard
  Savannah
  B.F.A., University of New Mexico; M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University.
  Show bio

  Celeste Lovette Guichard joined the SCAD architectural history department in 2004 and teaches courses on ancient and 19th-century architecture and urbanism. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on the New Town of Edinburgh, a project she researched while on a yearlong exchange at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. As a graduate student, she specialized in ancient Greek architecture, particularly that of the Hellenistic period, with a minor concentration in 18th- and 19th-century European urbanism. Her thesis focused on the interrelation of architecture and ritual in Hellenistic Oracular temples and entailed on-site study at sites throughout Greece and Turkey. She has also participated in excavations sponsored by the American School of Classical Studies at Corinth, Greece, and worked on a project sponsored by Notre Dame University to reconstruct the first Temple to Apollo at Corinth.

  
  
  
  
• 
  E.G. Daves Rossell
  Savannah
  B.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
  Show bio

  E.G. Daves Rossell, Ph.D., teaches American architecture and urbanism, vernacular architecture and cultural landscape. His research interests include field study of the built environment of Savannah and its surrounding Lowcountry; exploration of the history of technology and particularly illuminating engineering; and cross-cultural comparisons of material culture. Rossell founded and directs the Savannah and the Lowcountry Initiative, an educational effort engaged in uncovering, recording, preserving and presenting history through archival research, fieldwork, drawing and writing. The initiative provides opportunities for students, many of whom have never before done primary research, had their research impact local communities, and seen that research and effect published. SALI was developed out of Rossell's direction of the 28th annual meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum: Savannah and the Lowcountry. Rossell is co-editor of a forthcoming University of Virginia book titled "Commemoration and the City: Monuments, Memorialization and Meaning." He chairs the Chatham County Historic Preservation Commission and has served as chair of the Georgia National Register Review Board, as chair of Vernacular Georgia, and as co-editor of ARRIS: The Journal of the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians.

  
  
  
  
• 
  Karl Schuler
  Savannah
  B.A., Humboldt State University; M.A., Ph.D., New York University.
  Show bio

  Karl F. Schuler, Ph.D., teaches courses in medieval, monastic and fortified architecture. As a graduate student, he specialized in medieval and Islamic history and archaeology. His dissertation on the 12th-century chapterhouse murals at the royal monastery of Sigena in Aragon has led to various articles and presentations on medieval chapterhouse decoration. His current research interests include Spanish mission architecture and fortifications. Prior to joining the SCAD architectural history department in 1996, he served as a research assistant in the medieval department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under a Chester Dale Fellowhip and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowhip, and taught at Kean College, City University of New York and Manhattanville College. He is a retired veteran with 27 years combined service in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard Reserve and serves as a member of the Coast Guard Auxillary. He also is a board member of the Coastal Georgia Archaeological Association and remains active in local historical organizations.

  
  
  
  
• 
  Robin Williams
  Chair
  Savannah
  B.A., University of Toronto; M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania.
  Show bio

  Robin Williams, Ph.D., has served as chair of the architectural history department since its founding in 1996. He teaches courses in modern European and American architecture and urbanism, as well as research methodologies. He also frequently leads off-campus programs. At the University of Toronto, he served as a principal research assistant for an exhibition and book documenting the university's historic architecture, and as architectural photographer for several documentation projects. His master's thesis, focusing on the First Unitarian Church by the American architect Louis I. Kahn, won two essay competitions sponsored by regional chapters of the Society of Architectural Historians and was published, in part, in a study of Kahn's work. His doctoral research examined the transformation of Rome into the capital of united Italy during the late 19th century. Williams has lectured extensively and published on both this topic and his more recent interest - the city of Savannah and its urban plan. Since 1997, he has directed the Virtual Historic Savannah Project, and he also is an active member of local and state committees and boards concerned with heritage, preservation and planning.

  
  
  
  

Atlanta

• 
  Jonathan Farris
  Atlanta
  M.A., University of Virginia; B.A., Yale University; Ph.D., Cornell University.
  
  
  
• 
  Steven Moffson
  Atlanta
  B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.A., University of Delaware.
  Show bio

  Steven Moffson has been an architectural historian in the historic preservation division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources since 1996. He also teaches American architectural history at Georgia State University and SCAD-Atlanta. In addition, he has worked at the National Park Service and the Delaware State Historic Preservation Office. His interest in vernacular architecture in the South led to the publication of his article "Identity and Assimilation in Synagogue Architecture in Georgia, 1870-1920" in "Constructing Image, Identity, and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IX" in 2003.
  
  Publications:
  "Identity and Assimilation in Synagogue Architecture in Georgia, 1870-1920" in "Constructing Image, Identity, and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IX" (Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2003).
  
  Awards:
  Paul E. Buchanan Award for excellence in fieldwork, interpretation and public service. Presented by the Vernacular Architecture Forum for "Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site: Historic Resource Study," co-authored with Robert W. Blythe and Maureen A. Carroll, Charleston, S.C., 1994.
  
  Memberships:
  Vernacular Architecture Forum
  DOCOMOMO-US
  
  Courses:
  19th-century Architecture
  20th-century Architecture