Superheat: Bearable Substructures
Online sessions with Ala Younis
In this seminar, we reflect on the temporality, vulnerability, and exploitation of lives on a construction site. Questioning the frameworks and sources of “third world architecture” history, we experiment with and produce the contents of Superheat, the first issue of an annual publication. While the intensifying heat warms up construction sites and their materials, the stories of the lives on these sites survive as they happen within a bearable substructure. Negotiations of weight, power, tactility and others leave their mark (on flesh, on concrete, in files). We will read from personal accounts, re-piece fragments of archives, foreground her side of the story, hear on stocking and reporting, and dig into murky political pasts.
The seminar will be held from May 27 – June 29, 2020 on Sundays and Tuesdays, 6-8 pm Amman time. Public talks on Saturdays are open to the public.
Participation is online, free, and open to participants from around the world. Places are limited, and the call for participants is open until Monday May 11, 2020.
To apply, please send your cv and a short text of relevance (up to 500 words) to na2366@columbia.edu with “JALS Superheat Application” in the subject line by May 11. The text can be a cover letter, an excerpt of an essay or short story you wrote. Sending samples of your work is optional. Selected participants will be notified by May 15.
The Janet Abu-Lughod Library Seminar is organized in partnership with Sijal Institute for Arabic Language.
