In her book The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (JHUP, 2019), Adrienne Brown examines works produced by writers, painters, architects, and laborers who grappled with the early skyscraper's outsized and disorienting dimensions. She explores its effects on how race was seen, read, and sensed at the turn of the twentieth century. A highly interdisciplinary work, The Black Skyscraper breaks new ground in analyzing the influence of race on modern architectural design, as well as considering the effects of these designs on the experience and perception of race.
Adrienne Brown
Adrienne Brown is Associate Professor of English and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Chicago where her teaching and research interests include critical race studies, architecture and urban studies, American studies, Modernism, postmodernism, the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, popular culture, visual culture, and sound studies. With Valerie Smith, she is the co-editor of Race and Real Estate.
The video begins with Adrienne Brown's lecture, followed by Q&A with Museum Director Carol Willis, whose introduction to the webinar is included after the discussion.