Spring 2021 Building Solidarities

Spring 2021: Building Solidarities: Trans // Racial Architectures

Building Solidarities: Trans // Racial Architectures brought together activists, artists, architects, and academics from the community to talk about gender and sexuality, whiteness, and colonial spatial practices to examine urgent matters of embodied identity and its interactions with the built environment.

Building on an Independent Study with Professor Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi in Fall 2020, two Building Solidarities dialogues were organized and facilitated through Independent Study in the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department in Spring 2021 by the following students, in consultation with their faculty advisors:

Noa Weiss, BC History and Theory of Architecture / Dance

Amora McConnell, BC Architecture

Professor Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, B+C Architecture / ICLS affiliated faculty

Professor Ignacio G. Galan, B+C Architecture

Professor Marisa Solomon, BC Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

The Spring 2021 series was sponsored by The Office of the Provost at Barnard College, The Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University, and The Barnard and Columbia Colleges Department of Architecture.

Single Sex Institutions and the Racial Implications of Gendered Space

Guests: Seb Choe and Lucas Crawford

Dialogue Facilitator: Noa Weiss

Description: Single Sex Institutions and the Racial Implications of Gendered Space focused on trans* perspectives on single-sex colleges and the sex binary as a colonial construct. This dialogue considered the built environments that separate bodies, and bodies that build themselves. This event asked: how can Barnard adjust to incorporate bodies that defy the colonial logics it was founded on?

A research guide was not produced for this dialogue.

This dialogue was not recorded.

Institutions and Gendered Resistance in Land Justice Movements

Guests: Nandini Bagchee, Ece Canli, Patrick Jaojoco, and Hatuey Ramos-Fermin

Dialogue Facilitator: Amora McConnell

Description: Institutions and Gendered Resistance in Land Justice Movements examined the ways in which institutions are subject to the conditions of white supremacy that reinforce racial hierarchies, gendered binaries, and economic dependencies. By examining these complications of institutionalization, the invited speakers were asked to consider the limitations and potentials of community organizations and discuss the moments in which acts of resistance have acted as a tool to elevate trans/non-binary voices. Using these cases as a framework, the dialogue further examined the role of gender and transness in acts of resistance.

The research guide for this dialogue is available here.

This dialogue was not recorded.