ARCHITECTURES OF POWER, RESISTANCE, AND COEXISTENCE: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

This seminar adopts a global approach to examine architecture and the built environment as sites of power, resistance, and coexistence. Through a series of case studies spanning the globe, from Central Asia to the Mediterranean to the Americas, we will explore how architectural works--monuments, buildings, urban plans, indigenous settlements, refugee camps--exercised authority, resisted domination, and/or created settings for coexistence. Topics to discuss include cross-cultural interactions in medieval Iberia (Spain/Portugal); Nineteenth-century Orientalist architecture and its discontents; the interwoven complexity of infrastructures, race, and gender in early twentieth century South America; the spaces and politics of U.S. assistance programs during the era of “development” across the Global South; and environmental diasporas and indigenous reclamations from the Amazon to Sub-Saharan Africa in present days. This course occasionally meets at an area museum during the semester. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: HART 567 .