This roundtable invites scholars to share their recent findings on architecture and/in literature. As the field of architectural history wrestles with its own biases and narrowness, cultural objects on the built environment emerging at the margins of architecture as a discipline are more methodologically pertinent than ever. Expanding upon current efforts to challenge the centrality of architects as the main protagonists of architectural history, this roundtable posits literature as a critical source for the inclusion of various voices and perspectives in architectural history. Can examinations of architecture in literature redistribute discursive agency to builders, clients, residents, users, and eyewitnesses as literary and historical protagonists? As we prioritize literary sources over the intentionality of architects, can we identify patterns in new modes of evidence? At its core, this roundtable will foster a discussion on the methodological value of interdisciplinarity for improved inclusivity in architectural scholarship. Topics under discussion will include the architectural historian as a protagonist in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, architectural absence in Albert Camus’ “La Maison Mauresque,” architectural manifestos in Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, and urban atmospheres in Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman.

Register: https://sah1365.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CaxcBF-CTeCVngep16izyA#/registration