CONFERENCE: “Placing East Asia” A grad student conference on urbanism and the production of space, UC Berkeley, 02.-03.03.12

PLACING EAST ASIA
A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE ON URBANISM AND THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE
University of California, Berkeley
March 2-3, 2012
http://ieas.berkeley.edu/urbanism

This two-day interdisciplinary conference brings together graduate students working on urban studies in the East Asian region. Although the wide range of urban forms and historical experiences in East Asia preclude any generalization of an “East Asian city,” examining the region from different disciplinary perspectives can bring new insights on urban processes. Conference participants will present papers in seven thematic sessions, focusing on the interconnections between the local and global environs, human agencies and institutional structures, as well as the diverse array of discourses that shape the transformation of cities and everyday life.
Continue reading “CONFERENCE: “Placing East Asia” A grad student conference on urbanism and the production of space, UC Berkeley, 02.-03.03.12″

CONFERENCE: Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) Annual Meeting “The Political Economy of Cities”, San Antonio USA, 22.-24.03.12

Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) Annual Meeting
22-24 March 2012
San Antonio, Texas
https://seawiki.wikidot.com/annual-meeting

Program Chairs: Dolores Koenig ( dkoenig@american.edu ) and Ty Matejowsky ( Ty.Matejowsky@ucf.edu )

THEME: The Political Economy of Cities

The Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Anthropology, March 22-24, is focused on the political economy of cities. It offers four major paper sessions on: 1) Planning and Planners: Creating Urban Landscapes; 2) The Political Economy of Urban Space: Past and Present; 3) Building, Maintaining, and Changing Urban Economies; and 4) The Political Economy of Ideologies of Urban Identities. There are also two poster sessions that look at complementary issues in the political economy of cities and economic anthropology.
Continue reading “CONFERENCE: Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) Annual Meeting “The Political Economy of Cities”, San Antonio USA, 22.-24.03.12″

CfP, PANELSEARCH: New Deal Metropolis, Urban History Association conference, New York, 26.-28.10.2012

I am seeking papers for a proposed panel on the New Deal Metropolis at the Urban History Association conference in New York City from October 26-28, 2012.

Although the New Deal period is most often framed in the popular imagination by images of rural life and landscapes produced by FSA photographers and WPA muralists, a host of writers, artists, architects, city planners, and politicians were busy reimagining and redeveloping the industrial city. Not only did these urban intellectuals lay the theoretical and practical foundations upon which the physical, economic, and social landscape at the city’s core would be rebuilt in subsequent years, but they also sought to reconfigure the physical, economic, and social relationship between the city and its surrounding environs. That is to say, New Deal legislation and programs—and the cultural activity that drove and responded to these political endeavors—played an important role in shaping the modern metropolis. This panel seeks papers that explore the rise and persistence of the New Deal metropolis.

Please submit a one-page paper abstract and a one-to-two-page cv to Jamin Rowan ( jamin_rowan@byu.edu ) no later than March 12.

Jamin Rowan
Department of English
Brigham Young University
http://english.byu.edu/directory/jcr26/

REVIEW: Fabienne Chevallier “Le Paris moderne: Histoire des politiques d’hygiène, 1855-1898”

Fabienne Chevallier. _Le Paris moderne: Histoire des politiques d’hygiène, 1855-1898_. Rennes Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010. Illustrations. 410 pp. EUR 22.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-2-7535-1023-4.

Reviewed by Peter S. Soppelsa (University of Oklahoma)
Published on H-Urban (February, 2012)
Commissioned by Alexander Vari

Hygiene and the Modernization of Paris
Continue reading “REVIEW: Fabienne Chevallier “Le Paris moderne: Histoire des politiques d’hygiène, 1855-1898””

REVIEW: Susan Gilson Miller, Mauro Bertagnin, eds. “The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter in the Muslim Mediterranean City”

Susan Gilson Miller, Mauro Bertagnin, eds. _The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter in the Muslim Mediterranean City_. Aga Khan Program Book Series. Cambridge Harvard University Press, 2010. Illustrations. 227 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-934510-06-3.

Reviewed by Craig Larkin (Department of Politics)
Published on H-Urban (February, 2012)
Commissioned by Colette Apelian

A Cosmopolitanism Reimagined
Continue reading “REVIEW: Susan Gilson Miller, Mauro Bertagnin, eds. “The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter in the Muslim Mediterranean City””

CONFERENCE: Sustaining Greenbelt’s Legacy, Greenbelt USA, 27.-28.04.12

“Sustaining Greenbelt’s Legacy”
April 27-28, 2012
Greenbelt Community Center
Greenbelt, MD
www.greenbeltmd.gov/75

In 1937, the city of Greenbelt, Maryland, was settled as a public cooperative community under the auspices of the New Deal. 75 years later, a two-day symposium will celebrate and evaluate the developments since 1937.

The conference, entitled “Sustaining Greenbelt’s Legacy”, is scheduled for April 27 and 28 in the Greenbelt Community Center. The event will kick-off with the Greenbelt Museum Open House and book signing for _Images of America: Greenbelt_ (Arcadia, 2012) Thursday, April 26, in the evening.

Friday morning, the symposium begins with “A Living Community: Greenbelt’s Enduring Legacies”, followed by “The Greenbelt Museum at 25”. The afternoon speakers (city staff, residents and academics) will delve into “Diversity in Greenbelt” and “Public Transportation for a Pedestrian City”.

Saturday’s morning session cover new initiatives. The 1 p.m. keynote address, by British architect and planner Dr. Mervyn Miller, is entitled “From the British Garden City in Greenbelt and Back to the English New Towns”. For a complete program and to register, please visit: www.greenbeltmd.gov/75 and http://www.greenbeltmd.gov/75/Greenbelt_75th_Symposium_Registration_Form.pdf

For additional information, please contact Isabelle Gournay ( gournay@umd.edu ), Conference Chair.

Thomas Zeller
Department of History
University of Maryland
http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/TZeller/

LECTURES “In the Urban Crisis”, Parsons The New School for Design, New York, Thursdays 6p.m.

Parsons The New School for Design
Thursdays at 6 p.m.
The Keller Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York

To celebrate the launch of its two new graduate programs focused on urban transformation, Parsons The New School for Design has organized “In the Urban Crisis,” a lecture series featuring leading voices shaping the global dialogue about city development. The series highlights core themes of the MS in Design and Urban Ecologies [ http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ms-design-urban-ecology/ ], led by organizer Miguel Robles-Duran, and MA in Theories of Urban Practice [http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/ma-theories-urban-research/ ], led by Aseem Inam, which explore the ways cities are shaped and reshaped through planning, public policy, development, and architecture.

“In the Urban Crisis” is a free public event series running on select Thursday evenings at 6 p.m. throughout the spring. All talks will take place in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue.

Speakers include:

– Paula Z. Segal (Feb. 23), a lawyer and activist collaborating on the Occupy Wall Street project #whoOWNSspace.
– Tom Angotti (March 1), professor in the Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs and Planning.
– Don Mitchell (March 8), distinguished professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.
– Ana Méndez de Andés (March 29) a Madrid-based urban activist.
– Andrew Ross (April 5), a writer and professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.
– Erik Swyngedouw (April 19), a professor of Geography at the University of Manchester’s School of Environment and Development.
– Jeanne van Heeswijk (April 26), a Dutch artist and winner of Creative Time’s 2011 Lenore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change.
– Pelin Tan (May 3), an Istanbul-based sociologist and art historian.

Preceding the March 1 event, from 4:30-5:30, there will be an information session on the MA in Theories of Urban Practice and MS in Design and Urban Ecologies programs. http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/grad-events/

For more information on the “In the Urban Crisis” Series, please visit the School of Design Strategies (SDS) blog: http://sds.parsons.edu/

Pelin Tan
www.tanpelin.blogspot.com

CfA: Places Journal Call for articles on “Public and Private”

http://places.designobserver.com/feature/call-for-articles-public-and-private/31518/

Places Journal seeks articles that explore the complex dynamic of public and private in contemporary politics and culture, and how this dynamic influences the design and production of buildings, landscapes and cities.
This is a large topic, indeed one of the central issues of our time. In the past generation we witnessed a fundamental realignment, as the era of Roosevelt and the New Deal, with its broad-based confidence in the balance of public responsibility and private enterprise, gave way to the age of Reagan, with its faith in unfettered markets and limited government.
Continue reading “CfA: Places Journal Call for articles on “Public and Private””

CfP, CONF: 9th International Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, London Metropolitan University, 15.-17.11.12.

Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design
This conference aims to reflect on the relevance of the concept of dissidence for architectural practice today. Although dissidence has been primarily associated with architectural practices in the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War period, contemporary architectural and other aesthetic practices have in recent years developed a host of new methodologies and techniques for articulating their distance from and critique of dominant political and financial structures. Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence asks how we can conceive of the contemporary political problems and paradoxes of architecture in relation to their precedents? Devoid of the agency of action, Cold War dissidents articulated their positions in drawings of fantasy-like paper architecture, while contemporary forms of architectural practice seem to gravitate towards activism and direct-action in the world. The political issues – from interventions in charged areas worldwide to research in conflict zone s and areas undergoing transformations – currently stimulate a field of abundant invention in contemporary architecture. Both Cold War dissidents and contemporary activists encounter problems and paradoxes and must navigate complex political force fields within which possible complicities are inherent risks.
New forms of critical practice, and political and spatial dissent are manifold, appearing in stark contrast to contemporary architectural practice in which professional courage seems to have been translated into structural “virtuosity” of surfaces. This conference seeks to map out and expand on the methodologies of architectural action and reinvigorate the concept of dissent within the architectural/spatial field of the possible. A more historical thread that runs through the programme will seek to weave the genealogy of political/spatial practices from the Cold War dissidents of the Soviet Bloc to the activists of South American favelas. Continue reading “CfP, CONF: 9th International Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, London Metropolitan University, 15.-17.11.12.”

FUNDING: Postgraduate Scholarships: Built Environment, Design, General. Deadline: 1. March 2012

The Anglo-Danish Society invites applications from research students of British or Danish nationality for scholarships facilitating periods of research in the UK or Denmark. ADS particularly encourages applications from UK students wishing to conduct research in Denmark.
For the academic year 2012-13, there are two targeted scholarships: The Ove Arup Foundation award of £2000, for research students working on a subject relevant to the Built Environment, and a one-off special award of £2000 for students working on Design (broadly conceived), thanks to the generous legacy of the late Torben Skjalm Petersen.
More information on the scholarships and the application process can be found at:
http://www.anglo-danishsociety.org.uk/artman/publish/scholarships.shtml. Closing date for the return of completed applications is 1st March 2012.