This publication workshop for a co-edited book project will examine the role of race in the construction of historical narratives of “American architecture” during the long nineteenth century.
Across architectural periods and movements, the appropriation and adaptation of historical forms and styles gave rise to nationalist and regionalist ideologies with diverse political aims. The purpose of this volume is to consider revisionist histories of American architecture that subvert the synthetic narrative of “a nation of immigrants” or a “melting pot,” to recover the competing debates. This new portrait of American architecture will bring canonical and vernacular histories together in a contrapuntal narrative of the formative nineteenth century, paying special attention to the histories of those written out of canonical surveys.