2023 Call for Nominations

Deadline for the 2023 Cummings Award is Tuesday, December 20, 2022

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;
• 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 2021 through December 2022 are eligible for consideration. Edited collections of previously published materials are not eligible.

In the past ten years, the following books have received the Cummings Award. More information about these award winners can be found here. 

• -          2022: For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers: Architecture and Immigrant Reception in Canada, 1870-1930, by David P. Monteyne (McGill-Queen’s Press)
• -          2021: How the Working-Class Home became Modern, 1900-1940, by Thomas C Hubka (University of Minnesota Press)
• -          2020: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide, by C.J. Alvarez (University of Texas Press)
• -          2019: Spaces in Translation: Japanese Gardens in the West, by Christian Tagsold (Penn Press)
• -          2018: California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage, by Elizabeth Kryder-Reid (University of Minnesota Press)
• -          2017: Architecture and Empire in Jamaica, by Louis Nelson (Yale University Press)
• -          2016: Building Zion: The Material World of the Mormon Settlement, by Thomas Carter (University of Minnesota Press)
• -          2015: The Social Project: Housing Postwar France, by Kenny Cupers (University of Minnesota Press)
• -          2014: Meeting Houses of Early New England, by Peter Benes (University of Massachusetts Press)
• -          2013: High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century, by Matthew Gordon Lasner (Yale University Press)

The deadline for the 2023 Cummings Award is Tuesday, December 20, 2022.

There is no application form, but a cover letter should include the author’s complete mailing address, phone number and email address to facilitate communication should the nominated work receive the award. Please email this material to: cummingsaward@vafweb.org.  Nominators will receive instructions for sending three copies of the nominated book to the award committee.