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[1] From: Elena Rieger
Subject: CFP: Session at EAHN Athens: S11 - Women Making Space in South
America, c.1400-1900

Deadline: Sep 8, 2023

S11 – Women Making Space in South America, c.1400-1900

Anne Hultzsch and Dr Sol Pérez Martínez, ETH Zurich

The period between 1400 and 1900 in South America is characterised by a set
of transitions and processes of transculturation as indigeneity emerged
from the clash with colonisation. Empires competed, indigenous cultures
grappled with European colonisation, and both later fed into American
nation building. This session focuses on the period between the creation of
the Tawantinsuyu, the Incan Realm of the Four Parts, in 1438, thus the
definition of Andean territory as a continuous region, to the 1880s when
the Mapuche people in Southern Chile and Argentina were the last indigenous
group to lose control over their territories. The session aims to address
gaps in the architectural historiography of the Andean region especially
regarding moments of transition where ‘cultures meet, clash and grapple
with each other’ creating ‘contact zones’ (Pratt, 1991). We seek to
start these new histories through the perspective of women – from any
class or ethnicity – as one of the groups often excluded from scholarship
on the period. We ask how those identifying as women influenced, shaped,
critiqued, and made spaces within and alongside the force field of the
contact zone, with its asymmetrical power relations, its struggles, pains,
and opportunities?

Challenging linear Euro-American architectural narratives of styles
imported to the supposed new world, we invite contributions exploring the
role of women in shaping public and private spaces in the Andean
territories – from home and convent to street and plaza. Practices to be
examined for female space-making opportunities could include, for example,
building, homemaking, designing, writing, patronage, financing, teaching,
lobbying, gardening, or farming, even mothering. Contributions should
explore questions emerging from the triangle between gender, architectures,
and South America as a contact zone. What are the spatial categories most
useful when exploring women ‘making space’ in the period and region
(Matrix, 1984)? Does the public-private dichotomy of separate spheres serve
here? What sources provide evidence how women made space? Which writing
techniques yield the best results, from archival tracing to historical
fiction? How can we fill gaps when there are few traces (Hartman, 2021)?

Besides a methodological appeal for new approaches, the session also
queries key terminologies of architectural history: Who is the space-maker
during this period? What is the relationship between space-making and the
architect? Did the professionalisation of architecture during the 19th
century further the exclusion of women from space-making practices? Was
there a period of increased access colonial or institutional transitions
closed doors to women? Are there comparable developments in other regions?

This session hopes to facilitate a pivotal change to how we look at the
formation of architectural cultures in the past through the eyes of women
and their lived experiences, considering questions of race, class, or
religion, besides those of gender. As scholarship in the field of Latin
American architectural history has so far often been dominated by isolated
time periods defined by the male coloniser – such as pre-colonial,
colonial, post-colonial, modernism – the proposed period between c. 1400
and 1900 invites cross-readings based on dynamic approaches to historical
moments, places, and protagonists.

Information about the session can be found here:
http://eahn2024.arch.ntua.gr/index.php/call-for-papers/#S11

Abstracts are invited by September 8, 2023, and should consist of no more
than 300 words. Submit at eahn2024gmail.com along with the applicant’s
name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number
and a short curriculum vitae, all included in one single .pdf file. The
file must be named as follows: session or round table number, hyphen,
surname e.g. S05-Tsiambaos.pdf, RT02-Tournikiotis.pdf, etc.

​​Please submit your proposal following the instructions on the
conference website
(http://eahn2024.arch.ntua.gr/index.php/call-for-papers/)