Art History Professor Kerry Dean Carso discusses ornamental architecture in early America for “The Academic Minute”
Kerry Dean Carso, Professor in the Department of Art History, became the latest SUNY New Paltz faculty member to share research with radio audiences on the nationally syndicated program “The Academic Minute.”
Carso’s segment draws on her studies of “Follies in America”: small architectural structures that were popular among English and American aristocrats in the 18th and 19th centuries.
“Designed to mimic the architecture of the past, follies sparked reveries about history and the passage of time,” Carso says in the broadcast. “The name ‘follies’ derives from the apparent uselessness of these buildings in that they were primarily garden ornaments and belvederes or lookout towers, allowing their owners to survey the land that comprised their hereditary wealth.”
Listen to Carso’s “Academic Minute” in its entirety at this link.
Carso tackled the same subject in greater depth in the 2021 book, “Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture” (Cornell UP). She uses these symbols of European culture, transplanted in the early U.S., to explore major themes of 19th-century American culture including agrarianism vs. urbanity, tourism and tensions between social classes.
About “The Academic Minute”
“The Academic Minute” is an educationally focused radio segment produced by WAMC in Albany, New York, a National Public Radio member station. The show features an array of faculty from colleges and universities across the country discussing the unique, high-impact aspects of their research. The program airs every weekday and is run multiple times during the day on about 50 different member stations across the National Public Radio spectrum. For more information, visit http://academicminute.org/.
SUNY New Paltz faculty interested in appearing on “The Academic Minute” are invited to contact Senior Associate Director of Editorial & Media Relations Chrissie Williams at williamc@newpaltz.edu to learn more about the process.