Architecture and Visual Culture of Empire

Catalog description

This combined undergraduate and graduate seminar examines important urban and architectural concepts and practices that accompanied the expansion of colonial rule across much of the world during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics to be considered include: how early cultural encounters prefigured later representations of colonizing/colonized communities and their corresponding material cultures; colonial spatial orders and their implied relationship to forms of governance; debates on colonial domesticity and the proper arrangement of the home; and post-colonial architectural developments that grew out of the historical experience of de-colonization. We will consider primarily territories formerly under British, French, and German rule. A