Topical Questions in History and Theory of Architecture: World Making After Empire

Abstract

What do we mean by the terms colonialism, imperialism, postcolonialism, decoloniality, and coloniality, and how do they intersect with and unsettle studies of the built and spatially imagined environment? Using postcolonial thought as our lens, this course introduces students to the core ideas and key methodological strategies that inform inquiries into the colonial past and its enduring present.

Objective

This is a reading and discussion-based seminar. The aim is to introduce students to the core ideas and key methodological strategies that inform critical spatial inquiries into the colonial past and its enduring present. Students will be introduced to these concepts and methods through close readings of classic polemical texts that have shaped the arc of postcolonial thought and criticism, paying close attention to the political and intellectual contexts from which these texts emerged, as examples of embodied and situated knowledge. Charting the development of a radical movement in thought that disavowed and sought to expose the violence of colonialism, this course will explore recent narrative trends in architectural history that have taken seriously the imperatives of this movement, scholarship that works to rethink and reclaim marginalized aesthetic histories and agencies. We will approach the subject of decolonial and postcolonial critique from an intersectional perspective, considering its close relation to the many currents of thought that it sits alongside, including critical race theory, feminist and trans/queer criticism, anticolonial criticism, cultural studies, and minority and indigenous studies, all of which have generated new entry points into the study of the colonial past and present. Thinking with Ania Loomba, we will ask how ongoing struggles, such as those of indigenous peoples and threatened lands, and the enclosure of the commons in different parts of the world, shed light on the long histories of colonialism.

Content

World-Making After Empire: Reflections on the Postcolonial What do we mean by the terms colonialism, imperialism, postcolonialism, decoloniality, and coloniality, and how do they intersect with and unsettle studies of the built and spatially imagined environment? Using postcolonial thought as our lens, this course introduces students to the core ideas and key methodological strategies that inform inquiries into the colonial past and its enduring present.

Resources