Thomas Carter
tcarter[at]arch.utah.edu

Thomas Carter is an Associate Professor of Architectural History and Director of the Graduate School of Architecture’s Western Regional Architecture Program. Professor Carter’s primary interest is the study of vernacular cultural landscapes, and particularly those found in the American West. He began his academic life as a history major at Brown University before turning to the field of folklore studies, in which he earned a Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. Since his arrival at the Graduate School of Architecture in 1990, Carter has built up a solid core curriculum in American architectural history, teaching the comprehensive survey, a research methods class, a seminar on western vernacular architecture, an introductory class in historic preservation, and a summer field school in historical documentation.

He also directs the Western Regional Architectural Program which in 1996 received the prestigious Paul Buchanan Prize from the Vernacular Architecture Forum for “excellent in [the] research and documentation” of vernacular architecture in the western United States. Professor Carter is widely regarded for his work with vernacular building traditions. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and is currently president-elect of that organization. His work has appeared in the Journal of American Folklore and the Winterthur Portfolio. With Bernard Herman, he edited Volumes III and IV of Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, co-authored Utah’s Historic Architecture and The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey, and edited Images of an American Land: Vernacular Studies in the Western United States. His textbook, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: a Guide to Research, written with Elizabeth Cromley, is currently in press, and he is finishing a book on early Mormon architecture entitled Faith and Good Works: Making the Mormon Landscape in Utah’s Sanpete Valley.