What is a “home”? This course considers the changing ways in which
Americans have defined that term.  We’ll examine colonial
households, idealized nineteenth-century middle-class
homes, “modern” homes of the early twentieth century, post-World War
II suburbia, and (briefly) ideas about “home” today.  Along the way
we’ll also explore various places that cultural authorities defined,
often erroneously, as something other than “homes.” These included
slave cabins, tenements, boardinghouses, apartments, orphanages,
college dormitories, and communes.  We will also briefly examine the
history of homelessness in America. If class size permits, we will
take two field trips to examine homes in the Bloomington community.
To what extent did people who lived in alternative places conceive
of their residences as “homes”?  To what extent did they reject
dominant notions of “home”?  What has it meant to be “homeless” in
American society?