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Call for Participants: Writing Group on Architecture and Empire Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

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January 7, 2021
Africa, Australia, British Colonial Architecture, Climate, European Transnational, Ghana, Global Architecture, Heritage, Historiography, India, Middle East, South East Asia
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Call for Participants: Writing Group on Architecture and Empire
Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

https://www.sahgb.org.uk/news/architectureandempire

With a formal existence spanning early modern to contemporary history, the British Empire supported complex networks of trade, war and settlement. It intervened in land-based expansions as well as maritime worlds and prefigured a global architectural history. Yet research that seeks to critically address the empire and its legacy poses complex challenges for the architectural historian: the mental-mapping of bureaucratic systems across multiple continents, finding evidence of buildings and landscapes for which little documentation exists, sitting with a complex past and present of race, gender, religion, nationalism and capitalism.

This writing group is formed as an empathetic structure for scholars writing books and dissertations on imperial and colonial histories. We seek to create a space for researchers to share resources on chapter writing, structuring and revision. Writing is often an isolating activity, particularly for emerging scholars with non-Eurocentric specialisations that are underrepresented in the academy. To this end, we especially encourage applications from early-career researchers and those whose primary field sites are located outside of Great Britain. This project is among the first within the society’s new Race and Ethnicity network, a new effort to foster greater equality, diversity and inclusivity within the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

The group will meet for two hours every two months, with participants alternating between workshopping their own draft chapters and that of another in the writing group. Participants must commit to reviewing and presenting once every four months. To mitigate time zones and geographies, all events will be held over Zoom.

HOW TO JOIN

To join, please send a one-page cover letter and a brief project abstract to info@sahgb.org.uk with the subject line ‘Application: Writing Group on Architecture and Empire’ by 15 January 2021. The cover letter should state why you would like to be a part of the group and your general meeting availability, and the abstract should address the dissertation or book project you hope to work on as part of the writing group. All interested participants will be notified by 31 January 2021. The group will meet every other month beginning in February 2021. The meeting times, format and specific group expectations will be refined amongst participants during the first meeting and reviewed on a regular basis.

This writing group is convened by Sonali Dhanpal (Newcastle University), Sben Korsh (University of Michigan) and Y.L. Lucy Wang (Columbia University).

Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire

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August 11, 2016
Africa, British Colonial Architecture, Global Architecture, Historiography, Tropical Architecture
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Oxford University Press will publish ‘Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire’ on 7th October 2016. Below is a brief synopsis from the publishers website.

9780198713326

Throughout today’s postcolonial world, buildings, monuments, parks, streets, avenues, entire cities even, remain as witness to Britain’s once impressive if troubled imperial past. These structures are a conspicuous and near inescapable reminder of that past, and therefore, the built heritage of Britain’s former colonial empire is a fundamental part of how we negotiate our postcolonial identities, often lying at the heart of social tension and debate over how that identity is best represented.

This volume provides an overview of the architectural and urban transformations that took place across the British Empire between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Although much research has been carried out on architecture and urban planning in Britain’s empire in recent decades, no single, comprehensive reference source exists. The essays compiled here remedy this deficiency. With its extensive chronological and regional coverage by leading scholars in the field, this volume will quickly become a seminal text for those who study, teach, and research the relationship between empire and the built environment in the British context. It provides an up-to-date account of past and current historiographical approaches toward the study of British imperial and colonial architecture and urbanism, and will prove equally useful to those who study architecture and urbanism in other European imperial and transnational contexts.

The volume is divided in two main sections. The first section deals with overarching thematic issues, including building typologies, major genres and periods of activity, networks of expertise and the transmission of ideas, the intersection between planning and politics, as well as the architectural impact of empire on Britain itself. The second section builds on the first by discussing these themes in relation to specific geographical regions, teasing out the variations and continuities observable in context, both practical and theoretical.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Architecture, Urbanism, and British Imperial Studies, G. A. Bremner
PART I: Themes in British Imperial and Colonial Architecture and Urbanism
1: Beginnings: Early Colonial Architecture, Daniel Maudlin
2: Urbanism and Master Planning: Configuring the Colonial City, Robert Home and Anthony D. King
3: Stones of Empire: Monuments, Memorials, and Manifest Authority, G. A. Bremner
4: The Metropolis: Imperial Buildings and Landscapes in Britain, G. A. Bremner
5: Propagating Ideas and Institutions: Religious and Educational Architecture, G. A. Bremner and Louis P. Nelson
6: Imperial Modernism, Mark Crinson
Part II Regional Continuity, Divergence, and Variation in the British World
7: British North America and the West Indies, Harold Kalman and Louis P. Nelson
8: South and Southeast Asia, Preeti Chopra
9: The Australian Colonies, Stuart King and Julie Willis
10: New Zealand and the Pacific, Ian Lochhead and Paul Walker
11: Sub-Saharan Africa, Iain Jackson and Ola Uduku
12: Egypt and Mandatory Palestine and Iraq, Samuel D. Albert

Further details here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/architecture-and-urbanism-in-the-british-empire-9780198713326?cc=ro&lang=en&#