The Abbott Lowell Cummings Award, named after the founding president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, is awarded annually to the book that has made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes. In judging the nominated works, the jurors look for a publication that:

• is based on primary research;
• emphasizes fieldwork that takes seriously the materiality of architecture and landscapes, and draws on particular elements of environments as evidence;
• breaks new ground in interpretation or methodology; and
• contributes generally to the intellectual vitality of vernacular studies in North America.

Entries may come from any discipline concerned with vernacular architecture studies. Books published from January 2019 through December 2020 are eligible for consideration. Edited collections of previously published materials are not eligible.

In the past five years, the following books have received the Cummings Award:

• Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide, by C.J. Alvarez (University of Texas Press)
• Spaces in Translation: Japanese Gardens in the West, by Christian Tagsold (Penn Press)
• California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage, by Elizabeth Kryder-Reid (University of Minnesota Press)
• Architecture and Empire in Jamaica, by Louis Nelson (Yale University Press)
• Building Zion: The Material World of the Mormon Settlement, by Thomas Carter (University of Minnesota Press)

Please send your nominations to cummingsaward@vafweb.org by December 15, 2020. 

 

More information is available at: http://www.vafweb.org/Cummings-Award