Expanding Agency: Women, Race and the Global Dissemination of Modern Architecture

Lectures, Talks & Events

  • The Belgian Friendship Building

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – In-person seminar at University of Toronto, Canada. For a seminar of doctoral students from architecture and art history, this presentation introduced the Belgian Friendship Building in roughly the same terms as the lecture later that month at Trinity College. Read more

  • Expanding Agency: Women and the Global Dissemination of Modern Architecture, 1920–1970

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – in-person lecture at University of Toronto, Canada. To understand the agency that women have had in shaping the built environment demands looking beyond a handful of celebrated architects, their patrons, and the critics who supported them.  The role of journalists, especially those who wrote for the shelter press, of those who ran… Read more

  • Ethel Power

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – Zoom lecture on Ether Power for “Women in Architecture” course, University of Massachusetts, Amherst This lecture for Prof. Margaret Vickery introduced students to the importance of Ethel Power’s tenure as editor of House Beautiful. Read more

  • Chloethiel Woodard Smith: Engaging through Exhibitions

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – European Architectural History Network, Madrid, Spain. Delivered to the Woman and Gender in Architecture and Design interest group of the EAHN, this paper focused upon the way in which Chloethiel Woodard Smith’s role in exhibitions held in Washington in 1939, in Montreal in 1941, Havana in 1950, and Moscow in 1958, furthered… Read more

  • Conservation in a Shifting Landscape: The Future of Modern Architecture in South Asia

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – in-person round table, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. I was a panelist in this discussion, in which I commented upon the degree to which buildings by Louis Kahn that the current Indian government understands as evidence of continued neo-colonial power relations were in fact the product of local agency, including in the… Read more

  • Spiritual Heritage: Mendelsohn’s Late Synagogue Architecture in the U.S.

    Kathleen James-Chakraborty – Zoom lecture for Positioning: Erich Mendelsohn and the Built Heritage of the 20th Century, Berlin, Germany. The discussion of the role of race in mid-century modernism includes the role played by religion as well as skin color.  Delivered for a conference that marked the birthday of Erich Mendelsohn and is part of an… Read more