The next Deerfield/Wellesley Symposium on American Cultural History will
be held at the White Church Community Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts
on November 7-8, 1997.

In celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication at
nearby Greenfield, Massachusetts, of the first American book on
architecture, The Country Builders Assistant by Asher Benjamin, the
symposium will focus on "Architects and Their Books in the United States
to 1845."  Among the speakers scheduled to deliver papers are Abbott
Lowell Cummings, Damie Stillman, Martha McNamara, Richard Guy Wilson, and
Charles B. Wood III.  The papers will explore various issues pertaining
to the significance of the book in early American architecture: the role
of books, both European and American, in the training of American
architects and builders; the role of book knowledge in the creation of a
professional identity for architects; the impact of personal and public
library collections on architectural practice; early architectural
publications in New England, New York, and Philadelphia; and the
publication of the first history of architecture written by an American.

The symposium, an annual event, is sponsored by the Office of Academic
Programs at Historic Deerfield and the Grace Slack McNeil Program in the
History of American Art at Wellesley College.  For more information
contact Kenneth Hafertepe, Historic Deerfield, Inc., Deerfield, MA 01342
(413-774-5581) or James F. OGorman, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
02181 (617-283-2058).