WE ARE PLEASED TO BE OFFERING BOTH IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL ATTENDANCE OPTIONS FOR THIS EVENT! PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS TO JOIN EITHER VENUE.
Keslacy’s lecture, “Black Agency in the City: Post-Urban Renewal Landscapes in the American Rust Belt,” explores the fantastical Brutalist urban landscapes created by America’s first Black mayors of major American cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Recent reassessments of post-war American urban renewal programs have revealed the significant damage they perpetrated upon Black communities across the nation. In the Rust Belt, demographic shifts due to White flight and suburbanization allowed African Americans to gain political control of large yet declining cities. The Black mayors of cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and Dayton confronted the racial, economic, and spatial violence of urban renewal, and in response they invested in leisure-oriented landscapes designed to rejuvenate declining city centers and transform industrial river- and lakefronts into residential and entertainment zones. This talk will reveal how and why city leaders addressed their cities’ most pressing problems with investments in utopian, Halprin-esque parks, plaza and fountains that offered visitors open-ended experiences.
About the Speaker
Elizabeth Keslacy is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, and a design educator and historian of the built environment whose work deals with postwar and postmodern architecture and urbanism, the museology of design, and the discipline’s intellectual history. She is currently working on a book entitled Concrete Leisure: Public Space, Recreation, and Black Political Agency in the American Rust Belt that examines fantastical urban landscapes built as Black communities took on the leadership of major cities in the American Midwest. Keslacy has taught design and history at the University of Michigan, Lawrence Technological University, Kendall College of Art and Design, and Miami University of Ohio. Her research has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the Winterthur Museum, and the Miami University Humanities Center. Her work has been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, Footprint, Thresholds, OASE, and Lotus International. Keslacy earned an M.Arch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from the University of Michigan.
IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE
The lecture will take place at The First Congregational United Church of Christ, Second Floor, 945 G Street NW, Washington, DC. Reservations are not required. $10.00 for Latrobe Chapter members, student members (full time) free with ID, $15.00 for non-members. Doors will open at 6:30 pm for socialization and refreshments; lecture will begin at 7:00 pm.
VIRTUAL ATTENDANCE
Virtual attendance is free but advance registration is required to participate. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the lecture. Virtual lecture will begin at 7:00 PM. Please note that this event will not be recorded. TO REGISTER VIA ZOOM, CLICK HERE.
