Call for Papers: Urban Dislocations and the Architecture of Diasporas (1900 – present). Brighton, 4-6 April 2019
Association for Art History / 2019 Annual Conference
Ignacio G. Galán and Ralph Ghoche will be chairing a session titled “Urban Dislocations and the Architecture of Diasporas (1900 – present)” at the Association for Art History (AAH) Annual Conference in April 2019.
Cities tend to be chronicled by the achievements of the dominant cultures that were responsible for their rise. Often lost in these narratives, however, are the manifold contributions of non-native newcomers, immigrants, refugees, outsiders, and expatriates who played a formative role in shaping and re-purposing urban environments. Neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Chinatown, or New York’s Loisaida, for example, were refashioned by century-long migrations from Asia and Latin America. They are as much spaces of global exchange and cohabitation as they are discontinuous enclaves; cities within cities. To study these urban enclaves is to challenge what traditional discourses on the city tend to privilege: the continuity between architectural objects and the local contexts within which they are situated.
This session brings to light the paradoxical nature and hybridity of cities, drawing attention to both the economic, cultural, and technological connections and exchanges while also uncovering the ‘disjuncture’ of these urban conditions. We seek papers that delineate the formal and informal processes by which displaced groups have occupied and reshaped existing structures or territories and those that describe the transglobal networks that have facilitated these transformations. Papers can focus on the critical role that individuals, community groups, and activist collectives play in the appropriation, spatial transformation, and re-signification of existing structures and environments.
The session chairs are interested in approaches that engage different scales of transformation, from specific buildings and projects to the repurposing of existing neighborhoods; from infrastructural interventions into the urban fabric to the development of wholly new cities.
The session abstract can be found below and the full call for papers can be accessed here or downloaded here.
Deadline for Paper Proposals: Monday 5 November 2018
Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s).
Ralph Ghoche, Barnard College, Columbia University rghoche@barnard.edu
Ignacio G. Galán, Barnard College, Columbia University igalan@barnard.edu
You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).