Symposium Announcement

“Constructing Race: The Built Environment, Minoritization, and Racism in the United States”

March 5-6, 2004
Levis Center
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Organized by Dianne Harris

Sponsored by the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and the College of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This symposium examines the relationship of the built environment to the reinforcement of social constructions of racial identities and modalities of racism. It will focus on the everyday spatial apparatuses that reflect, reinforce, and even create racially based practices of exclusion, oppression, minoritization, and privilege in a variety of realms. In this two- day symposium, speakers will address this topic from a range of perspectives and at a variety of scales. Invited speakers include scholars from disciplines whose works focus on environmental justice, cities and public spaces, housing, and landscapes. Key questions for investigation may include examinations of the manner in which spaces define insiders and outsiders; exclusionary practices and counter-movements that are spatialized; space as a framework for the construction of racial or ethnic identity; spaces that enforce privilege; the ‘invisibility’ of racialized spaces; the instantiation of racism in the architecture of specific institutions and forms; racism and professional practice in the environmental design disciplines. Our primary but not exclusive focus will be the United States in the twentieth century.

The following is a list of confirmed speakers:

• Craig Barton, University of Virginia
• Rebecca Ginsburg, Washington University, St. Louis
• Greg Hise, University of Southern California
• Laura Lawson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego
• Theresa Mah, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
• Dell Upton, University of Virginia
• Raúl Villa, Occidental College

Discussants include (all from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign):

• Martin Manalansan, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
• Sharon Irish, Graduate College Scholar, School of Architecture
• Oscar Vázquez, Associate Professor, Art History
• Dianne Harris, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture

There is no registration fee for this symposium.

A web site with more information will be in place by the end of January. For now, additional information can be obtained by contacting Dianne Harris via email, or by visiting the website for the Center on Democracy and click on “Events”