Goldsmith Talks: Toward an Inclusive City

The student led CRP Diversity Committee, hosts a special UTSOA roundtable discussion on race and gender and LGBTQI issues in the built environment. Students and faculty across the fields of architecture and planning will discuss their scholarly and professional work with race, gender and space, as well as their broader reflections on policy, design, theory and practice in their respective fields. This is an informal yet critical discussion, and we strongly encourage a horizontal and honest exchange among all in attendance. 

Discussion panel to include: 

Elizabeth Danze, Interim Dean UTSOA

Danze is a principal with Danze Blood Architects, and her work integrates practice and theory across disciplines by examining the convergence of sociology and psychology with the tangibles of space and construction. She is co-editor of Architecture and Feminism and co-editor and author of CENTER 9: Regarding the Proper andPsychoanalysis and Architecture-The Annual of Psychoanalysis, Volume 33, and CENTER 17: Space and Psyche. She is also the architect advisor to the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on Psychoanalysis and the Academy.

edanze@utexas.edu

Anna Livia Brand comes to the school from the University of New Orleans Department of Planning and Urban Studies. Her research focuses on the historical development of and contemporary planning and design challenges in black mecca neighborhoods in the American North and South, including Chicago’s Bronzeville, New York’s Harlem, Washington D.C.’s Shaw, New Orleans’s Treme, Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn, and Houston's 3rd and 4th Wards. In her work, Brand investigates and compares how the redevelopment of the historic business and cultural corridors in these communities reflects ongoing racialization and changing commitments to equity and social justice for those who have traditionally suffered under urban revitalization policies. For the spring 2017 semester, she will lead a course on race and urban development that draws on urban planning, critical race theory, and black feminist theory and scholarship.

annalivia@utexas.edu

 

Andrea Roberts graduated with her doctorate from the UT School of Architecture’s Community & Regional Planning and Historic Preservation Programs. She is Founder of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, a research & social justice initiative dedicated to recording settlement origin stories and African American contributions to planning history and practice. Her transdisciplinary, participatory action research focuses on cultural agency, identity, African diaspora theory, intangible heritage, and grassroots planning and development. While pursuing her doctoral degree, Andrea participated in the City of Austin’s Historical Wiki Project, a crowdsourcing architectural survey application. In 2012, she created and served as Project Manager for The Fifth Street Project, a community-based planning initiative and market study conducted under the auspices of the Center for Sustainable Development at UT. Her course this spring, Cultural Landscape & Ethnographic Methods, will investigate just and sustainable approaches to recognizing and protecting vernacular, gendered, and racialized places.

roberta318@utexas.edu

The Feminist Design Collective's mission is to create an empowered community of marginalized groups and individuals by means of: bringing awareness to the lack of diversity and support in, specifically (but not limited to), female involvement in the realm of architecture, and facilitating open and inclusive discussion regarding power structures and gender roles in the built environment. The values of this organization include: social justice, safe spaces, collaborative learning and design, and community involvement (within both The University of Texas at Austin and in the greater Austin community). 

fdc.utsoa@gmail.com

Devin Oliver is a third-year dual master's student in Community & Regional Planning and Latin American Studies. Devin has dedicated most of his studies, volunteering and activism to queer and trans youth of color in the US and Brazil. Devin bases his master's thesis research in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, studying the historical role of urban planning in the city's postcolonial geographies of race, gender and violence. In particular, Devin reflects on the ways in which black LGBTQ folks negotiate gendered, anti-black violence and the potential of these spatial practices as an "insurgent" planning project. Devin holds a B.A. in Geography from The Ohio State University. 

oliver.251@utexas.edu

Tatum Lau holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a Masters in Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources from London Metropolitan University. She has a broad range of experience having worked in architectural research and publishing and the non-profit sector in Johannesburg.  She moved to the UK to focus on affordable housing and taught at the University of Bedfordshire.  Tatum has returned to graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin and is completing a dual degree in Urban Design and Community and Regional Planning in order to pursue a career as an urban practitioner and educator.

tatumlau@utexas.edu

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Goldsmith Talks is an open-format series of presentations organized by UTSOA faculty, staff, and students. the series aims to encourage and promote presentations that are outside of the scope of the main lecture series. Examples are: invited seminar presentations, book talks, lectures by designers and scholars who may be in Austin for another engagement, round-table discussions, film screenings, product demonstrations, or any other activity related to research, scholarship, and teaching activities and at the school. The format provides a platform for encouraging the dissemination of work by visitors and members of our community. The goal is to raise awareness, increase access, and better integrate such events within the public life of the school.