The following essay was published in the September issue of The Architectural Review for their “Reputations” series. You can read its edited version here on the magazine’s website. I would like to thank the editors for permitting me to publish the longer version of this essay on my personal blog. bell hooks taught us to […]
The following “Field Note” was co-written with Irene Cheng (CCA) and Mabel Wilson (Columbia University) in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. This essay discusses the content of the publishing workshop for our forthcoming volume on Race and Modern Architecture with the University of Pittsburgh Press, as well as the broader need within […]
The following essay was published in the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Journal, a venue for analyzing contemporary art from an interdisciplinary perspective. I would like to thank Lisa Uddin (Whitman College) and Michael Gillespe (CUNY) for editing the series of posts on blackness. The original essay can be […]
The following essay appears in volume 42 (Winter/Spring) issue of Log, a special issue that was entitled “Disorienting Phenomenology.” The full title of my essay is “Blackness in Practice: Toward an Architectural Phenomenology of Blackness.” I would like to thank the editors for permitting me to post this essay on my academic blog. Table […]
Just after the 2016 Presidential election was called and Donald Trump became the President-elect, the CEO of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) wrote a letter to congratulate the new administration and secure business contracts for the more than 89,000 members of this organization. Metropolis magazine was one of the first sources to cite the […]
1. The first instance of recording police abuse that I can recall (at least vividly) is the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Though the footage was grainy, and I was still in high school, it was a visceral reminder of the monopoly on state-sponsered violence that police officers employed against the black body. It also […]
I am please to announce the reposting of my thoughts on June Jordan on another website. The Aggregate collective, an experimental forum for architectural historians had recently curated a call for papers on the recent Black Lives Matter protests. This effort was headed up by Professors Jonathan Massey (California College of the Arts) and Meredith […]
William A. Gleason, Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race, and American Literature (New York: NYU Press, 2011) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Race, Writing, Architecture: American Patterns Cottage Desire: The Bondwoman’s Narrative and the Politics of Antebellum Space Piazza Tales: Architecture, Race, and Memory in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Stories Imperial Bungalow: Structures of Empire in Richard Harding Davis and Olga […]
Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Diversity and Ignore Inequality (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006) Table of Contents Introduction 1.The Trouble With Race 2. Our Favorite Victims 3. Richer, Not Better 4. Just and Unjust Rewards 5. Who We Are? Why Should We Care? 6. Religion in Politics: The […]
In the last few weeks, I have begun to read writings situated within the field of whiteness studies. This journey began tangentially with readings related to my book project, including Martin Berger’s Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (University of California Press, 2005), which is a work in visual studies and Dianne Harris’ Little […]
Race & Architecture 