His dissertation, “Empire’s Stores,” seeks to understand the imperial formations of corporate capitalism in the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by studying the architecture, urbanism, and organizational structure of four firms anchored in US port cities. Working against accounts that privilege the nineteenth century’s technological annihilation of space and time, the project foregrounds media practices and physical infrastructures operationalized by the modern business enterprise to take advantage of their unevenness.
In addition, Sturtevant is currently leading a yearlong research project, “Beyond the Built: Rethinking Archival and Research Practices in Architecture,” alongside Pamela Casey, Architecture Archivist at Avery Drawings & Archives, with support from the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University.“