 I'm Reinhold Martin, and as Lela said, I direct the history and theory sequence in the architecture program, programs plural really, and I'll try to explain a bit about that, but in a GSAP. Most of what I'm going to speak about is the curriculum in the MRC program, the three-year MRC program. But for those of you who may be enrolled in any of the other programs or any of the other, you know, like in urban design or planning or anything else around the school, most of these courses are also available to you. It's just that we have specific distribution requirements in the MRC, and that's just to explain to incoming students and to current students, you know, how that works and what we are offering. So first of all, to begin, I wanted to welcome those of you who are, I see, you know, on the screen a number of returning students and a special welcome to our incoming students in this very difficult and unusual year, as we all know, and I'm sure there are many questions about that. I know that there have been various town halls and other forms of communication with all students via the dean's office. So I may be able to answer some other questions that you might have on, especially with respect to the history theory classes in terms of the policies and practices that we're going to be following in the fall. But equally important, I want to begin by addressing other historical events that intersect with the pandemic, and in particular here in New York and in the States. This is to those students who are here in the States, but also for those who, as is typical at GSAP, are coming to us from all over the world. It has been and will continue to be one of the roles in the overall curricula in the school of the history theory sequences to interpret the world, to make sense of what's happening today, and to put that in perspective, historical perspective in a particular manner. Another way of saying this is that I think we see as our sort of core task in these classes, that of cultivating collectively together amongst all of ourselves and including the faculty, a kind of historical consciousness and awareness of the relationship between past, present and future, which is a very, as you probably know, and we will certainly emphasize in the teaching that we do, is a complex, sometimes even contradictory relationship, but certainly something that is, for all of us, a continuing challenge to make sense of, and that every individual member of the faculty in one way or another works on in their own work, and you can see that in our kind of collective publications and the other work that we do. And in particular today, I want to recognize the importance in this country, but also around the world, of the protests that have arisen in to contest, to protest, and to, you know, in a sense, transform the society in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd and many, far, far too many other black citizens and also non-citizens in this country in quite brutal and, as you probably know, rather barbaric ways. And so, you know, it was once said by a very important figure, Walter Benjamin, a critical theorist, German critical theorist from the Weimar era, early 20th century, that every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism. And it's in that sense that we look at our documents, we consider our documents, which were, for us in our field, and when I say field, I mean mostly architecture, but we can also extrapolate broadly into the built environment, into the history, urbanism, landscape, and so on. The documents are also monuments, they're sites of meaning. And then, of course, the contest over meaning that we are witnessing in acts of revision, literally historical revision in taking down, for example, Confederate statues across this country or other offensive monuments that distort American history in particular ways. It kind of reflects and can be thought more broadly across the various landscapes and urban environments and, of course, in the context of individual works of art and architecture that we study. So, in that sense, these events that continue to unfold, and in which many of us participate, we all participate in one way or the other, are a challenge. They represent a kind of challenge to us, to all of us, to think and to, in a sense, rethink continually the premises on which we work. And here together at GSAP as a faculty, we've been in the midst of working through those premises under the more general rubric or kind of theme of unlearning whiteness to emphasize that this is not just a matter of recognizing and interpreting what is sometimes called the racialization of individuals, of groups, and of cultural practices, and by extension their exclusion and marginalization from society. But somebody's doing that work, and that work, that work of exclusion has been for centuries, tragically, the work of what we, what is now called whiteness in specific ways. You're not necessarily going to see classes that are dedicated to this theme, because that's sort of the point that these questions, and these are very, very difficult questions, and they're not exclusively, they're not limited to the US context, but here we are, we're in New York, and we're, in a sense, beginning there. These shake up the very foundations of how we do our work and how we think. And it's really in that kind of spirit of rethinking foundations that we can kind of generally think about the work of history and of what we call history and theory, because all history involves conceptualization, all historical knowledge, all historical work, reading, writing, etc., involves conceptualization, the production of meaning, the configuration of value, and so on. So that's the work that we hope to do together with you as we welcome you back or welcome you for the first time to GSAP. In a much more, let's say, institutional sense, it is also my task to explain to you more or less what that could mean. And here I'm mostly addressing the incoming students and as a kind of way of welcoming you into our curriculum. I thought it would be just the kind of simplest thing to do would be to go to the website for a few minutes and give you a bit of a tour through the history and theory requirements of an MR program and explain a little bit how we've conceptualized that. And with that I'll follow with a brief kind of synopsis of the course offerings, both required and elective for the fall. And that are kind of representative of this structure. And hopefully we have about half an hour or so after that to take your question. So I'll just go now quickly and share my screen. So here we go with them to the website that I think many of you probably have seen. This is the architecture program requiring student degree requirements on the GSAP website. And it's really this line here, which says history and theory in the 18 points of history theory that I want to call your attention to first. And the rest, it's basically a math problem, you know this. So I don't need to go into too much depth on that, but these requirements are incorporated in and kind of part of the larger puzzle of the three years in the MR program that you will spend with us. So in the first year, this applies to both fall and spring. The principal history course, the required course for all incoming students is called questions in architectural history one, which is in the fall and questions in architectural history two in the spring. And these are taught as not as big lecture courses, but as kind of smaller group, smaller classes run by faculty, by the history faculty individually, but also working together as a kind of team. And we are joined by teaching fellows who are PhD students who are themselves in the process of developing a teaching practice, and they join us as collaborators in these classes. I'll explain a little bit more when I get to the list of classes, but basically that's the first two semesters of first year. And then, as you see, there are various distribution requirements, one, two, three, four, that can be spread across the remaining semesters and remaining years and semesters. So here are the, I mean, you have this for all the classes, but the history theory ones are here. So here are the two sequential courses, the required courses, QAH is how we refer to this, QAH one and two, the six points, and then history theory distribution requirements for M.R.C. students entering. So it is a little complicated we change this. So I apologize for the double explanation, but those of you who are entering now, this is what you should pay attention to because this is in or after fall 2019. We revised this a couple of years ago. So the basic idea is to think both across time and space, architecture is modernity. And by modernity, we mean more than just like 20th century modernisms and things like that, we are talking more in the kind of timeframe of four or five centuries, really. This is most traditionally understood to begin in what's called sometimes the early modern period in art history. This is referred to conventionally as the Renaissance and then all the way up to the present. So and around the world. So not just some kind of central Western tradition or canon, but rather a de-centered global tradition or traditions that mix and interact and in fact conflict in many different cases. So the way that we've set this up is that every M.R.C. student is required to take these four distribution requirements. One from the period, 1800 is sort of the chronological cutoff date. There's a certain degree of contingency to that. It's just a kind of convention. The way we narrated here is this is basically when worldwide industrialization began. And that's maybe a little bit more of a grounded and inclusive way of thinking about it. Not necessarily that this is a history of industrialization, but even agrarian economies and societies are part of this history in relation to the industrial capitals of Europe, for example. And of course, during this period after 1800, in particular, but beginning well before, this is the period of European colonization. So anyway, so each student is required to take one course, at least one elective course that concentrates principally, not exclusively, but principally and they're labeled accordingly, pre-1800. And then in either of two geographical coordinates that we use to describe this, the north, the global north and or west, these are again very conventional categories that we've just used to mark what are often rather unconventional ways of interpreting them in the actual courses. And northwest or southeast, I mean, you can think about it as global north, global south. Each category has its own problems and we're not suggesting that these are authoritative, these are just ways of, in a sense, giving some coordinates to the concentration and focus of each class. And so the pre-1800 can be either northwest or southeast, or both in some cases. Post-1800, then you have to take one of each, basically after 1800, one that's concentrated in the north or the west and the other concentrates in the south or the east. And then there's an open elective in which you can take any of the above. And it says here, you're expected to combine breath. It's kind of like you can curate your own path through this, but ideally would combine breath in areas that you haven't studied with some depth in one of these categories. That's a way to think about the open electives and any other electives you might choose to take. There are opportunities to waive requirements, but I will say right away that we do not waive the QAH one and two classes, the history introductory history classes. That's a common experience. It's a core, it's kind of like the Columbia core in some ways, the college, the Columbia college core, that this is a common experience for all incoming students. And then people who've had substantial architectural history in their previous undergraduate at an advanced level can apply to waive one of the distribution requirements. I won't go into the previous version, you can see it here, but this is basically what the requirements were. And you can therefore see how we've revised this. So, okay, so now I'm gonna switch screens and I'll go into some of the courses and then take your questions. Okay, I'm gonna stop this share and share screen. Now these are the courses that are currently listed for the fall. Now I should preface this by saying we are really in the process of finalizing and confirming all of this, which has to do of course with the mode of teaching that you have heard about by President Bollinger's emails and through communication with Dean Andraus. But we as a faculty are shaping our teaching record accordingly. So this is where things are at right now. You will be registering or re-registering for classes in very early September, I believe it's September 1st and 2nd. So by that point, these courses will all be documented more fully online and the process should be pretty straightforward of learning more detail about what they're about and then making your decisions. The currently, there's some information online. That's kind of what I'm saying this and some will be to come. So you won't find all of this online quite yet. So okay, the first year QAH course will be taught by Lucia Ale, myself, and Nabel Wilson. Questions in Architectural History I. And as I said, we teach those in individual sections. Each section is a little bit different. Do we share a syllabus? Will we interpret that syllabus somewhat differently? So slightly different readings in each section, but very, very highly and tightly coordinated. And it's in that course to begin with, but there's this project of unlearning whiteness and of thinking, race and society through architecture and urbanism in and throughout the curriculum is begun, you could say, here. And each of us will begin it slightly differently, but you can expect that this question, among many others, will be a very important one. Another quite related and kind of profoundly related, but also somewhat distinct question that in particular in the 19th century, I should have said that the QAH one deals principally with the 19th century. The long 19th century is a late 18th century into the around the early 20th. And QAH two, the second one in the spring, deals mostly with the 20th century from more or less the late 18th, late 19th century up to around the present. And so if you think back and you begin kind of shaping historical consciousness, not trying to understand these difficult questions that are posed through architecture, to us as subjects of history, as people who participate in and make history together. We don't do this individually in any sort of meaningful way. I think we do this together. That of course the question of slavery in the United States and also of European colonialism in South Asia, in later in Africa and East Asia are really central concerns. And these all have an architecture, they have a discourse and they interact with the kind of European canon as it's sometimes described. And similarly, and we often very much learn from our students in these ways because we do have students coming from all over the world, the different traditions, architectural and monumental traditions, building traditions that have developed over millennia all over the world inform those relationships and in a sense, speak back to the European colonial powers and the other forms of interaction that we witnessed through this long century. And so this is a way of saying that that class is also a kind of exercise in thinking relationally, thinking about connections between here and there, this and that through specific objects, specific texts and specific processes. So I can answer any further questions about that later if you like. I'll now just go quickly into the electives and explain that the way this is, we have the course member, the faculty member's name and title of the course and then the classification in the two, in the categorization in the two systems, the old one and the new one. So what you probably wanna pay attention to is the information on the right here. If you're thinking about how this is gonna satisfy particular distribution requirements. So in the beginning, we had to hear two classes from my colleague, Mary McLeod, one on the politics of space, which has to do with particular traditions around the figures of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault in thinking about the modern city and its institutions and as the title says, what happens in the modern, what Lefebvre calls everyday life. And so this is, we don't really classify things as history or theory, but this is the kind of class in which you would encounter a good deal of cultural theory as well as architectural theory as well as discussions about actual cities and so on. Mary is also teaching a course called modernism in the vernacular, 1900 to the present. This category of the vernacular was extremely important and remains so in many cases. It's basically a modern concept, but very important for many modernist architects like Le Corbusier and others. And in this syllabus, she follows this concept from both directions, from the European and North American kind of metropole, but also taking a close look at architectures that these Europeans might have considered vernacular, but other traditions, particularly, in other words, the traditions of the East and the South would simply have considered modern or contemporary. So this concept of vernacular is a contested one. Next is Cendro Marpilaro's course and it was called large metropolitan sublimes in which he takes the aesthetic category then in question. This is the kind of philosophical concept coming from the manual count of the sublime and then the relation between the beautiful and the slime. This is very important for landscape history and treats the sort of Hudson Valley as a kind of case study. There's the Hudson Valley School of Painters and so on that initiate this case study in thinking the relationship between, this is the title of the course, of a region and a relatively rural agrarian region, Hudson Valley and the city metropolitan, the metropolitan part, basically New York City. Mark Wigley's course, The History of Architectural Theory is a kind of long survey from Vitruvius to the present of concepts in architectural theory as they kind of develop over time and then since return again and again and then I'll skip, Mark Wigley has another course called Extreme Design which is more focused in the 20th century, later 20th century on experimental designs that are a bit outside of the mainstream of architectural building practice and so on. The, Mark Vasuda has a course called, this is in, you see a 4503 on spectacular pedagogies which is, you could read this as a prehistory of Zoom, of what we're doing right now. Mark looks at the kind of development of these kind of televisual and tele-technological media in beginning around during the war and the kind of media post-war period and thinks about their kind of genealogy in educational practice including the exclusions as well as the inclusions along the lines of race and class and gender that these have entailed through this period. And these are all the ones I've just described are all post-1800s, some of North and West, most of North and West Mary's class, the vernacular is a bit of both and we have classified it as South and East. Amy Olyveld teaches a class on China. She teaches a number of classes on China. This particular one is of early modern China, principally the Ming and Qing period up to 1912. It is obviously straddles of 1800, the period 1800 but we have kind of oriented, we've kind of centered it in the pre-1800 and she, you know, this is an example of an architectural tradition, very, very robust and very, very complex that interacts with the West, Europe in particular in a variety of ways, especially in the late 18th and into the 19th century, increasingly so, but is in and of itself a crucial tradition to understand and so you would have the opportunity to be introduced to this tradition and this practice, this project really in Amy's class. Mark Okotansky revisits another kind of parallel tradition actually, now from Europe, the Renaissance, early modern period, but thinks about this differently using the tool of contemporary tools, computers that is and the tools of what are called the digital humanities to rethink basically authorship and the way in which some of these names that have come down to us, Alberti Palladio and so on from the art historical canon centered on the European and especially Italian Renaissance are in a sense more like pluralities and in terms of the actual way of designing and building at that time, but also the factors and forces, including imperial and colonial or protocolonial relationships that structured cities like Venice and other important Italian capitals or city states during this period. So hence the title of the Combinant Renaissance, it's kind of taking really quite canonical objects but in a sense turning them inside out, rethinking them with new tools. Victoria Sanger's course on military urbanisms in the early modern era, they also centers, this is a little bit later than these previous two, it centers around in the 17th century and 1600s, the so-called Baroque period with the French engineer, Volban, who was a military engineer who was very important as a strategist in organizing military campaigns and as well as a kind of urban planner basically, designing fortifications and individual buildings and developing building typologies that, and this you can see as a kind of history of infrastructure in a certain way taken much further back than typically these kind of stories are taken and of the relationship between military planning and military organization and the development of the modern city in Europe. So next would be is Louis Caranzas, a federal architectural and falsified cities, utopian visions for Latin America. This is one of several courses on Latin American modernism that Caranzas teaches and in this case focused on the idea which is really a colonial idea coming from Southern Europe and projected onto what was called first New Spain and then now we call Latin America, the utopian ideal, the kind of the idea that this is of course, it was not, this was a conquest but was conceived by some of the, many of the conquerors and the early Spanish and Portuguese occupants or imperialists who came to South and Latin America as a kind of terra nullis, this is the term that sometimes is used, kind of tabula rasa or open space on which more or less utopian fantasies and visions can be projected. This practice continued after decolonization and the during the modern period and it's mostly on the sort of later sort of repetition of the idea of projecting utopia onto indigenous space that Caranzas of course focuses. Richard Planz has a course on what he calls fabrics and typologies in New York, global basically this is a course in comparative urbanisms in which New York as global city is the central character for the first half of the semester and then to establish the sort of characteristics of this particular version of the global city paradigm and then of course this is a way of teaching with where we are, introducing you as students to the city in which you're in, Richard is real expert in housing in particular but just generally in history of New York City and then he will then compare this to various other as it were global cities around the world. Okay, getting towards the conclusion here. Two courses by Atea Korkevala, both centered in the global south in South Asia principally but not exclusively by any means and in the post-war post-45 period the period of decolonization. In a sense you could think about these as two aspects of this kind of colonial post-colonial transition in the middle of the century. One has to do with the generally Northern or Western concept of development as articulated in bodies like the UN and numerous other international bodies on in relation to architecture, modernization of cities, the development of housing, infrastructure, et cetera. And as a difficult and problematic concept on one hand but also one that has had substantial effect on the worlds in which we live and the world that we share. So this is in a way history from the South and if you think about it like this you might think about what it might mean to understand this kind of European and North American sort of canon and so on. Not from Europe and North America but from let's say New Delhi or Mumbai or Karachi. So, and quite a lot of well-known modernist architects are circulating in and out of these channels. It has other seminars called feasting and fasting this centers on a kind of biopolitics of food. You can think for example of Gandhi's salt marches and the role that salt plays for example in anti-colonial resistance in India. And of course, and she mentions this in her description that we've learned all too well and all too sadly about the biopolitics of food and its kind of centrality during the current pandemic as supply chains are interrupted and places like meat packing plants become the sites for outbreaks. And so food is not all, it's feasting and fasting. She says in her title it's not all kind of carnival-esque kind of dinner parties but rather also a really a way in which to understand inequality and at vast scales at a kind of global scale and dispossession in very concrete ways. And of course architecture has all kinds of ways in which it plays into these processes. Okay, and now in another seminar, this is again on leaning a little bit more towards theory, structuralism, the theory of structuralism as both critique and an object of criticism Lucia Ale. Lucia, she points out that terms like structural change or structural racism have returned to our vocabulary as tools with which to contest the status quo. And this practice and this kind of vocabulary has a long history. The sort of formal philosophical discourse of structuralism is among the key kind of low side for that history. And so you'll be reading if you take this class from important texts in structuralist theory, but of course architecture has its own relationship to the concept of structure. And it's in the sense, I think that interplay between societal structures and the way that architects and architectural theorists have considered this category that is the kind of focus of this class. And then finally, I'm offering a seminar in addition to teaching in QAH1. I'm offering a seminar called Architecture, Engineering and Political Ecology. This is basically a history of ecological conflict and including and centered around racial dispossession through the lens of infrastructural development, basically engineering with examples like the Tennessee Valley Authority and then during the New Deal era and as sort of principal sites for political ecological contestation in the United States, but also again, in different sites around the world. The role played by or the kind of way in which we can understand something that we call today racial capitalism. In other words, dispossession along the lines of race is will be a central focus here as will the whiteness of what is known as the professional managerial class, which is to say architects, engineers and other managers of the built environment as that whiteness is produced historically during this, the period that we're gonna cover which runs basically from the New Deal to the present. So I think that's probably enough for a intro to this. I will stop the share and yeah, we have about 20 plus minutes and so on for questions. So to follow Lila's instructions, I will first look at the chat and I don't see any. Okay, so don't have any questions submitted. Everyone is now able to unmute themselves. So feel free to just pop in with your audio to ask the question. You're also welcome to turn on your camera now so that this can be a more discussion. And just a few of you, as you were entering your cameras were on and I stopped the cameras so that they didn't interfere with the recording. If you're not able to turn your camera on now, you should send me a message because I can fix that for you. First, I apologize, my screen seems to have frozen. This doesn't usually happen. Anyway, you can hear me, right? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, well, I may not be able to send till the sun freezes and I'd see the speakers. I apologize, I don't know why that happened. Okay, so I might rely on, because I won't be able to see hands if Lila, if you don't mind if there are hands. Okay, we're still waiting for students to collect their thoughts. One thing not to be provocative, but one thing that I might just start the conversation with is maybe a little bit about how, or a little bit more about how things are changing this semester over previous. Also, there's some new faculty that have joined us that that would be interesting to hear some more about. Yeah, no, that's great. So yes, two of the faculty that I mentioned in particular, Ateya Korakawala and Lucia Alei have just joined our history and theory faculty as full-time faculty members and we're thrilled that they have joined us. And I just gave you a little bit of a quick, excuse me, to their individual teaching. But as with all the faculty here, one of the best ways to make sense of what you're likely to encounter in a class is to look up the publications of individual faculty and both Ateya and Lucia have published widely in the areas in which they work and this applies to all the faculty. There are people at different stages in their kind of process of publishing books and so on. So the best thing to do is also to look for articles as well as books or even interviews or other forms of exchange about the work that we all do. Because this is, I don't wanna say it in a way that seems sort of overly, chauvinistic vis-a-vis Columbia because if anything to your other question, Lila, this is a humbling time. This is a time in which in every possible sense we should be humble. But in the spirit of a kind of institutional humility and also personally, because it's a pleasure for me to work with all of these colleagues, this is an extraordinary faculty. And this has been work that we've done over the years. I've been here quite a while, I have to say. So in inviting and assembling this group, and so we're really thrilled. And this is really the first year, honestly, that this new Innocence configuration of the faculty is gonna be fully present. So for us, for me personally and for all of us, this is very exciting. We also, I should add, share a conversation with a number of other architectural historians in the Art History Department and at Barnard and in the program at Barnard College, our partner institution in the undergraduate architecture program at Barnard and Columbia Colleges. So you can look up the faculty there and often in the events that we host or the other work that we do in an extracurricular way as a history theory kind of culture and group, these folks will be just as prominent or present as the GSAP faculty. How are we doing on- Well, I'll read a question from Stefan or Steven Zimmer. Are there any specific authors or texts that you might recommend incoming MRC students, especially for this summer as we're getting ready for the fall semester? Excellent, thank you. That's one of the things that we are doing. What we have typically done, which it's just as a logistical limitation we're not able to do with the QAH class is, but if anybody has access to this or would like to on your own read this, there's a book called The Birth of the Modern World by Christopher Bailey. It's a sort of classic in world history. And this goes to this point of trying to set the stage to think relationally and critically, comparatively, across different sites and across time. It's a kind of history of the 19th century around the world, all of the cultural history boat mostly all over the world. He describes, there are sections on religion, there are sections on economic relationships, on colonialism, on urbanization and so on, chapters on these areas. And we typically have actually required that as a textbook basically for QAH and asked students to buy it over the summer and then to read through the year. Given the circumstances that we're under right now, we have felt that that wouldn't be quite right because people would have unequal access and we couldn't assure that everybody'd be able to get hold of this. And so what we will do in its place is to send, not right now, maybe most likely in early August or so of early to mid August, some early kind of introductory readings probably will send this as PDFs or something so we can make sure everybody has them to set the stage as we go. But nonetheless, there's several others listed on the QAH syllabus which when it goes live, we're currently still adapting it to the circumstances but that will reflect this kind of large world history kind of context. And so for example, there you will learn about the history of the concept of race as it was manifest and it continues to be manifest in this country but one that is quite different for example than the way such concepts might be manifest in other contexts around the world. So I don't know, does that capture, does that respond to the whole question because I can't see the question. Yeah, absolutely. So the next question and just so everyone sees in the chat we've now, I've uploaded the flyer for a birth of the modern world so you can get all the details on the book. From Nick Shannon, what are some of the tensions or debates emerging within the history and theory department as well as the field at large? That's a great question. How do you see the relationship between research and studio practice and how might one inform the other? Yeah. Well, we can do a whole class in the first part of that question so you'll have to forgive me for being reductive and I won't be able to speak to all the debates. One of them though that is quite reflected in especially in the QAH syllabi and also in the distribution and the theme of many courses is the work, the ongoing work of what a seemingly neutral language might be called globalizing the curriculum a less neutral language would be called de-centering the European or Western or provincializing the European or Western canon. And maybe even decolonizing the imagination that would be the probably the most ambitious way to stage that. We aim for all three, but we do not claim this is the recognition that humility is first and foremost called for because this goes for practices and discourses as well as in a sense institutionalization of the hegemony of whiteness, for example but also of many other related power relations that the hardest work for all of us to do is work on what we take for granted what goes without saying as we teach. And so in every history lecture and conference and whatever that we might host here or that you might see somewhere, you know, one way or the other these kinds of questions are gonna be in play. There are other more specific, you know, kind of methodological questions that there's a whole plethora of, you know I'll just summarize them by saying that the work of architectural history at this point really is interdisciplinary work and there are different approaches to that and you know, you can see some of that in some of these classes you certainly see that in different faculties work and there are different sets of objects. There's history writing that centers on ideas and on discourse and on texts. There's other history writing that centers on buildings or cities or actors in those buildings and cities design architects or the occupants of those spaces and quite a lot that also mixes those approaches. So it's a very vibrant, is the architectural history is a small field. I like to call it a minor discipline but there are certain advantages to that and one of these is a certain kind of tactical and strategic leverage and that speaks to the other part of your question I'm hoping I get all of this as to the relationship which is a classic question we'd certainly talk about this, you know a lot in the kind of conversational culture that we try to develop in the QAH sections in the classes. I should have said about QAH it usually involves everybody does this a little differently but a kind of introductory lecture or the presentation of material but it's a two hour session each week so we try always to make sure there's enough time for conversation and frequently I can speak for myself at least in the one that I teach the section that I teach. I might ask to me so what are you doing in studio and how does this relate? Does this relate? For example, the first year studios often deal with New York as a site and there's a moment in the syllabus in which we deal with the history of the street grid in New York and specific aspects of New York City and so that usually is a moment in which there's a more direct connection but because the overall goal is to develop, nurture cultivate historical consciousness a way of being historically I mentioned that Walter Benjamin quote I mean there are many many others from many many other thinkers then and now that we could refer to about our relationship to history but that one referred to every document of civilization as a document of barbarism that to see the violence in New York City streets is not always easy and that's something that we have to to see police violence for example is something to train ourselves to do and that's also part of the work and that's not like just for the history classes that's for everybody that's for the tech classes and the computer classes and for the studio so we try to kind of pose these difficult questions and we use a lot of tools to do that the readings, the presentations that we do and so on and especially the conversation but it's very very critical really that these translate back and forth across the curriculum last part is that each section, each week in its current form of QAH is structured according to different tensions that are thematized that week so there's one for example to stick with this theme of the relation between race and nation which are not historically the same thing they're clearly interconnected this is being contested in very very profound and violent ways in this country right now this relationship, it's partly what we mean when we say whiteness today in the US is to explain and name that relationship and these relationships are historically constructed they're constructed by things like statues and buildings and discourse and newspapers and so on so those materials are dealt with in studio in your professional practice course and in your history class so it's really the basic idea is to provide students with not just rhetorical questions but ways of posing questions, techniques even to pose questions, to think through these questions that are transferable from a historical situation to a more contemporary one and simultaneously to recognize that the way that the way in many ways that the present is in a sense haunted by or shaped by the past again as we've witnessed so profoundly in recent weeks and I'm sure any of you all over the world wherever you may be could report from your particular context and offer similar examples and this is the kind of thing that we wind up discussing in the class. Do we have, I don't know, did I get all the respond to all the parts there? Nick, since you've joined or you've added your I just want to give you the opportunity to follow up if you wanted to, if you have one more question in the chat afterwards. Oh, okay. Just to say thank you for your response. Sure, okay, well thank you. These are, you know, as you could see there are kind of really interesting questions to discuss. Great, so just to let everyone know it's 12.52, we'll try to end around one. So I'd venture a guest that will take this question and maybe one more. So if you'd like a rush to fill your question into the chat, please feel free to do so now. This question is from Kadiya Tarver. What would you, what do you think makes the current history and theory curriculum successful and what are its shortcomings? How do you see the curriculum and faculty and department progressing? Yeah, no, again, great questions. I mean, I'll start with the shortcomings because they're in a sense, that's the easy part. We have not succeeded fully in, as it were, decolonizing the curriculum. And you could just look at the courses. And in fact, we have not, I would say as a group or as a discipline or even individually concluded, this could be understood as both a strength and a limitation, specifically on what that could mean or what the priorities might be. And as I said, I think in response to the first question, these issues are more or less constantly being debated in our kind of gatherings as historians and in print. You can find this all. So we remain bound by our, the burdens of our traditions. And to be quite realistic, these, the brutality of modern history as well as its incredible achievements cannot be undone, nor can these achievements be fully recognized and in a sense reproduced in 12 weeks in one semester or even in a small sort of experience. This is the work of lifetimes. And each of us in our own ways have attempted to do this as scholars, do this work. But not in one voice, again, that could be seen as a limitation or a strength. I personally, this is one way of answering the strength question is that there's a debate actually amongst, and you can kind of read between the lines maybe of syllabi and of the way somebody might speak about something lectures and you probably are better, students are better positioned to understand that the kind of contours of these debates because you might be going from class to class and listening to one faculty member speak about something like this and then suddenly somebody else speaks about something in a different way. For example, the relationship between the work of architecture, capital A architecture with an architect and these larger historical processes that I'm referring to, that relationship remains just as contested as ever and we certainly have not made any sort of definitive conclusions about what it means to be an architect or to learn to be an architect in this place, in this time. And so again, that cuts in both directions. But really the principle strength I would say and for me this has been like I said before, our true privilege is this incredible, the richness and complexity of the conversation and the debate which is not likely to end anytime soon but takes different forms as it develops and different participants join and that includes all of you because we rely on all of you, the students in GSAP to not just to listen to these discussions but actually to intervene and the most exciting moments are often when somebody raises their hand. I mean, we have a new way of doing this with Zoom but nonetheless we can do it. Somebody says, no, actually, well, maybe I think what if you thought about what you're saying in a different way? Somebody contests what I might say or disagrees and brings evidence to the contrary or it says what about this situation? What about that situation? And it's that capacity to debate. This is why what used to be called architectural history one and two is now called questions in architectural history one and two. That capacity to debate is, I think, a core value and a core strength and something that we have to protect with everything that we can in very difficult times. So I don't know, did I? Are you there, Lila? Uh-oh. Lila, what happened? No, I'm here. Okay, good. I'm still... Yes, you joined us with your camera. Did you have anything that you'd like to add to your question? No, I think that was it. Thanks for answering. Yeah, okay, good. Well, thanks for the question. Great, so at this point, we haven't received any more questions in the chat so we'll just give one last opportunity. Anyone else who'd like to join the discussion, please do so now. And in the meantime, Reinhold, do you have any final thoughts to share as we wrap up? Yeah, I mean, you know, in the spirit of a shared conversation and even debate, I really wanted to welcome everybody again because, you know, one of the things we've all learned in these difficult times is how alienating this way of speaking with one another can be. And, you know, we'll see what the fall actually brings in terms of how we adapt to this situation. As you know, and I'm sure you've heard from many others, everybody here is working like harder, I have to say, than I've seen anybody prepare for a semester ever. And in order to do as much as we possibly can to work with you and to learn together, to teach you for sure, but also to learn together about the work that we do together. And so, you know, again and again, we'll just say welcome to this conversation. This is an extraordinary group of people that you'll have the opportunity to interact with and by that I mean not just my colleagues on the faculty but also the students. I've been teaching here since for over 20 years and I at this point have, I don't know, how many, how you count generations but several generations of students with whom I remain in touch and it's always astonishing to me and just really quite, you know, amazing and satisfying to hear about what people do in all kinds of different ways when they leave us. So that's how it works. You know, you come for a while and we stay and so we can see things develop and change and so we're inviting you into that process. Thank you again, Reinhold, for all of your work and sharing that with us. I'm assuming that there's maybe an email address for the office or for the department, maybe something like contact information that you can share if there are any. Yeah, I mean, if anybody has any specific questions the best is to get in touch with me directly. My email address is on the, you know, it's online. I don't know, I don't have access. I'm sorry, Lila, to the chat because of this frozen situation. That's okay, I'll take the day. You can put it in there. I just wanted your permission before I... Of course, yeah, no, it's there anyway. And if anybody has any particular questions, technical or otherwise, let me just while we're at that say ahead of time that we will have for anybody who wants to look to, you know, to place out of some of the electives that really is for the later. This is, you know, for incoming students don't worry about that right now. But if there are, you know, continuing students that want to do that, we will do that sort of towards the end of the summer before the semester starts.