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Engaging essays that roam across uncertain territory, in search of sunken forests, unclassifiable islands, inflammable skies, plagiarized tabernacles, and other phenomena missing from architectural history. This collection by “architectural history's most beguiling essayist” (as Reinhold Martin calls the author in the book's foreword) illuminates the unfamiliar, the arcane, the obscure—phenomena largely missing from architectural and landscape history. These essays by Edward Eigen do not walk in a straight line, but roam across uncertain territory, discovering sunken forests, unclassifiable islands, inflammable skies, unvisited shores, plagiarized tabernacles. Taken together, these tex...
"Nauman argues that contrary to the technological and teleological interpretations presented by the polemicists of "international style" modernism, the academy's actual production was squarely grounded in bureaucratic and political processes. He demonstrates that selection of both the site and the design firm was the result of political maneuverings involving the U.S. military leadership."--BOOK JACKET.
Greg Castillo presents an illustrated history of the persuasive impact of model homes, appliances, and furniture in Cold War propaganda.
Kant and the Concept of Race features translations of four texts by Immanuel Kant frequently designated his Racenschriften (race essays), in which he develops and defends an early theory of race. Also included are translations of essays by four of Kant's contemporaries—E. A. W. Zimmermann, Georg Forster, Christoph Meiners, and Christoph Girtanner—which illustrate that Kant's interest in the subject of race was part of a larger discussion about human "differences," one that impacted the development of scientific fields ranging from natural history to physical anthropology to biology.
A history and theory of the powers, the failures, and even the pleasures of paperwork. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, political thinkers of all kinds—radical and reactionary, professional and amateur—have been complaining about “bureaucracy.” But what, exactly, are they complaining about? In The Demon of Writing, Ben Kafka offers a critical history and theory of one of the most ubiquitous, least understood forms of media: paperwork. States rely on records to tax and spend, protect and serve, discipline and punish. But time and again, this paperwork proves to be unreliable. Examining episodes that range from the story of a clerk who lost his job and then his mind in the F...
Race and Displacement captures a timely set of discussions about the roles of race in displacement, forced migrations, nation and nationhood, and the way continuous movements of people challenge fixed racial definitions. The multifaceted approach of the essays in Race and Displacement allows for nuanced discussions of race and displacement in expansive ways, exploring those issues in transnational and global terms. The contributors not only raise questions about race and displacement as signifying tropes and lived experiences; they also offer compelling approaches to conversations about race, displacement, and migration both inside and outside the academy. Taken together, these essays become...
Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex explores the infrastructural history of the United States rocket launch complex. Working primarily between 1950, the year of the first rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, to 1969, the Apollo moon landing, the book highlights the evolution of its overlooked architecture and infrastructural landscape in parallel to US aerospace history. The cases outlined in this book survey the varying architectural histories and aesthetic motivations that helped produce America’s public image of early space exploration. The built environment of the U.S. space complex shows how its expanded infrastructural landscape tended to align ...
A landmark study of abstraction in architectural history, theory, and practice that challenges our assumptions about the meaning of abstract forms. In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, this book presen...
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. The Poet's Mistake -- Chapter 1. Wordsworth's Imperfect Perfect -- Chapter 2. Robert Browning's Bad Habit -- Chapter 3. Wondering about John Clare -- Chapter 4. Emily Dickinson's Eloquent Lies -- Chapter 5. Hart Crane's Wrapture -- Chapter 6. Fact-Checking Elizabeth Bishop -- Chapter 7. Misremembering Seamus Heaney -- Conclusion. Mistaking on Purpose -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index.