Writing Land into Architectural Histories

The Spring 2024 Symposium “Writing Land into Architectural Histories” organized by the doctoral students in Cornell University’s History of Architecture and Urbanism Society (HAUS), aims to explore the entangled histories of the built environment, land and ecologies, examining intertwined methodologies that address questions of writing land into and out of histories of architecture. It invites doctoral students working on the built environment in any discipline to rethink ways of utilizing land as a method in transnational and transimperial histories of architecture.

Date: Mar 22, 2024

Location:

Ithaca , United States 921 University Ave

Overview

The Spring 2024 Symposium “Writing Land into Architectural Histories” organized by the doctoral students in Cornell University’s History of Architecture and Urbanism Society (HAUS), aims to explore the entangled histories of the built environment, land and ecologies, examining intertwined methodologies that address questions of writing land into and out of histories of architecture.

The combinatory practices of both architectural and landscape architectural history have grappled with new ways to interrogate the instrumentality of land as a mechanism that perpetuates relationships of power. How do land policies integrate into the built environment to produce various forms of skill and expertise that challenge normative, often colonial and imperial forms of knowledge production? How does materiality of land shape architecture? How do technologies of land and state-making processes move bodies’ across land? How do various forms of colonialism imbue structural histories of violence on and to land?

Spanning a broad temporal range and extending to various geographies, we invite doctoral students working on the built environment in any discipline to rethink ways of utilizing land as a method in transnational and transimperial histories of architecture. Papers can include, but are not limited to: soils and their relationship to building practices and techniques; medicalization and health measurements; land and ecological governance; property rights and land-use schemes; cultivation and resource management through surveying technologies and agricultural infrastructures; representations of land; models of community and solidarity building through land traditions; labor; and methodologies of multispecies histories of architecture. 

Schedule 

—Friday, January 5, 2024 / Abstracts Submission Deadline

—Friday, January 12, 2024 / Accepted Abstracts Notifications out

 —Monday, March 4, 2024 / Deadline for Accepted Papers Submission

 — Friday, March 22, 2024 / Symposium Date

Submission Details 

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract with your name and affiliated institution and a 1-2 page C.V. through Cornell University’s submission form by January 5, 2024. 

Accepted papers will be notified on January 12, 2024. 

Organizers: Priyanka Sen, Asya Ece Uzmay, Qianye Yu, and members of the History of Architecture and Urbanism Society (HAUS) Cornell University Graduate Student Group

Website: https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/symposium/writing-land-architectural-histories#open-sec-0