RGDST talk by Kathleen James-Chakraborty on "Expanding Agency: Women and Modern Architecture and Design"

Abstract

The recent explosion of interest in the work of female architects does not fully capture the impact that woman have had on the shaping of the built environment. Documenting their activity as journalists, entrepreneurs, and institution builders, as well as extending the established scholarship on women’s patronage, enhances our ability to map their influence. Between 1920 and 1970, for instance, women carved out successful careers importing modern architecture and design into the United States, as well as disseminating it domestically and exporting it internationally. Reconstructing how they marketed modernism, often to other women, challenges our understanding of how tastes change and shifts our attention away from a focus on form towards issues such as identity formation and social distinction.

Bio

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is Professor of Art History at University College Dublin. She also holds a 2021-22 Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her books include Architecture since 1400 (Minnesota, 2014), and Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany (Minnesota 2018). Her current research is funded by a five-year Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. She was the recipient of the 2018 Gold Medal in the Humanities from the Royal Irish Academy.

This event is co-sponsored by the Research Group on Democracy Space and Technology of the Yan P. Lin Centre and the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture.