Conference | Listening In: Architectures, Cities, and Landscapes
From the conference website:
Listening In: Conversations on Architectures, Cities, and Landscapes, 1700–1900
ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg and Zentrum campus, 13–15 September 2023
Who do we listen to when we write histories of architectures, cities, and landscapes? How many women authors can we find among our sources? How many of them are cited by those whose research we read? We argue that women and other marginalised groups have always been part of conversations on architectures, cities, and landscapes—but we have not had the space to listen to them. This conference is an invitation to reconstruct such conversations, real, imagined, and metaphorical ones, taking place in the 18th and 19th centuries, in any region, in order to diversify the ways we write histories. Taking the art of conversation, integral as both practice and form to the period in Western thought, and repurposing it to dismantle the exclusivity of historiography, this conference calls for contributions which bring women into dialogue with others.
Listening In proposes a new approach to the ‘canon’ and its protagonists. Rather than either fighting its existence or expanding it by means of ‘exceptions to the rule’, we call for the setting up of productive conversations. We acknowledge that the canon never exists on its own; instead, it is shaped by what Griselda Pollock has called “that which, while repressed, is always present as its structuring other” (1999, 8). This conference is envisaged as a listening exercise. We regard a conversation as both codified practice as well as a specific act of verbal exchange, spoken or written, on a particular subject—here architectures, cities, and landscapes—occurring in a specific site, from street to salon, kitchen to court, construction site to theatre, field to church, or book to newspaper, to name but a few.
Listening In is organised in the context of two externally funded research projects based at gta, ETH Zurich. Women Writing Architecture, 1700–1900 (WoWA) is funded by the ERC, led by Anne Hultzsch, and studies female experiences of architecture and landscapes as recorded in women’s writings from South America and Europe. The SNSF-funded project Building Identity: Character in Architectural Discourse and Design, 1750–1850, led by Sigrid de Jong and Maarten Delbeke, focuses on the uses and meaning of the notion of ‘character’ in architectural criticism and practice. Both projects share an interest in the experiences of marginalised groups, especially those who identified as women, and strive to have them heard not in a niche, but in the centre of our field. With this conference we wish to open up our approaches to a wider field of research, going beyond our respective geographical frameworks.
There will be a limited number of free audience tickets for our two-day conference. To register and for more information please visit our website.
This conference is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No.949525).
Key Note Speakers
• Prof Mabel O. Wilson
• Prof Jane Rendell
Organised by
Group Anne Hultzsch and Professor Maarten Delbeke Chair, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zürich
Scientific Committee
Prof Maarten Delbeke, PD Dr Anne Hultzsch, Dr Sigrid de Jong, Dr Sol Pérez Martínez, Dr Nikos Magouliotis
Orginising Committee
Prof Maarten Delbeke, PD Dr Anne Hultzsch, Dr Sigrid de Jong, Dr Sol Pérez Martínez, Dr Nikos Magouliotis, Dr Noelle Paulson, Elena Rieger, Alejandra Fries
Call for Papers | Women Making Space in South America, 1400–1900
Women Making Space in South America, 1400–1900 (#S11)
Session at EAHN, Athens, 19–23 June 2024
Chairs: Anne Hultzsch and Dr Sol Pérez Martínez, ETH Zurich
Proposals due by 8 September 2023
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.
Abstracts are invited by September 8, 2023, and should consist of no more than 300 words. Please submit your proposal following the instructions on the conference website. Submit at eahn2024@gmail.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. S11-Tsiambaos.pdf.
Enfilade 
leave a comment