Caste, Race, and Space: Architectural History as Property History | Heyman Center for the Humanities

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Owing to the current Campus Access Level, all prospective attendees must register by 4PM on October 2. Registration will automatically close at that time. Caste, Race, and Space: Architectural History as Property History Lecture by Sonali Dhanpal Chaired byZeynep Çelik Alexander By examining Bangalore’s emergence out of a boundary between colonial and princely rule, this talk shows the persistence of caste in the city, revealing how caste power is far from overcome through the transition to colonial modernity but rather hardened onto a new racial regime of property. Using the suburban house form, the bungalow, I show how property ownership was the material domain by which hierarchies like caste materialized in the built environment. Setting aside the dominant histories of the bungalow as a ‘global’ building form, I show its proliferation in Bangalore, just as in other colonies through British colonialism, as the naturalization of modern property with the growth of the capitalist world economy. By reading architectural history as property history, we see how the bungalow as a propertied building form drew the touchability line in South Asia, separating upper caste peoples from those they deemed “untouchables” with implications for theorizing the global color line. Image Credit: The bungalow as a detached house within a compound and enforced as a model dwelling Picture Courtesy: Stephens, J. H. (1914) British Library. The Society of Fellows hosts the Thursday Lecture Series (TLS), which runs regularly throughout the academic year. During the Fall Semester TLS, our Fellows present their own work, chaired by Columbia faculty. Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. Information Source: The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities | eventbrite