Latin American Modern Architecture and Urbanism

Ambiguous Territories: Articulating New Geographies in Latin American
Modern Architecture and Urbanism

Columbia University, New York

March 27-28, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: November 1, 2008

We invite the submission of papers that consider the modern architecture
and urban design of Latin America in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

In some formulations of architectural history and theory Latin America
endures as a category of analysis and as a delimited cultural territory.
Alternative discourses resist the term Latin America; revisionist
positions attempt to sweep away the residues of this grand narrative
through the presentation of individual or singular experiences that
reorganize connections and associations, and present new geo-cultural
assemblies. Intra- and extra-regional networks, the emigration and
immigration of ideas, architects and designers, the reorganization of
the nation-state, the collapse of the politics of modernism, help to
contest but also to reassert the idea of Latin America. The tension
between these approaches to the architecture and urbanism of the
“region" has rarely been critically examined. This conference calls upon
scholars to situate their research in this contested geographical,
cultural, political, and ontological imaginary called Latin America. It
asks researchers to examine their work in relation to other possible
geographies (pan, national, regional, or international zones of
identification, or other imagined or repressed configurations) that help
identify or dissolve, assert or disregard, manifest or negate, this
simple yet haunting enunciation.

Paper proposals will be accepted in English, Spanish, Portuguese and
French. Presentations are to be given in English. Financial assistance
will be available to participants in support of travel expenses.
Submissions from emerging scholars and doctoral students are
particularly encouraged.

Deadlines:
Paper proposals/abstracts (max. 500 words): November 1, 2008
Acceptance notifications: December 1, 2008
Paper deadline: February 1, 2009

Paper proposals should be sent via email in MSWORD or PDF format to:
ambiguousterritoriesgmail.com <mailto:ambiguousterritoriesgmail.com>

Ambiguous Territories: Articulating New Geographies in Latin American
Modern Architecture and Urbanism is organized by the doctoral
students in architectural history and theory at the Graduate School of
Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University.
The conference is supported by the GSAPP, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center
for the Study of American Architecture, and the Graham Foundation for
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.