Modern architecture is unique in being self conscious of its own historicity: the very concept of the modern, while suggesting a break with the past, is based on the historicist notion that architecture should be true to the ‘spirit of the age’. The modern movement’s principles were formed in part by historians who interpreted it as it enfolded, and their account shaped its subsequent development, with each generation rewriting the history of modern architecture as a way of self fashioning itself via-vis its relation to modernity. This seminar provides the tools for critically analyzing the aims and methods of the discipline of architectural history, and explores how historical knowledge interacts with practice.