Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Turkey, Pakistan, and Their European Diasporas

Turkey and Pakistan have been subject to two of the largest compulsory population transfers of the twentieth century. They have also been the sites for large magnitudes of emigration during the second half of the twentieth century, creating influential diasporas in European cities such as London and Berlin. Discrimination has been both the cause and result of migration: while internal problems compelled citizens to emigrate from their countries, blatant discriminatory and ideological constructs shaped their experiences in their countries of arrival.

This analysis furthers the study of modernism and migration across the borders of, not only the nation-state, but also class, race, and gender. As a result, this book is of interest to a broad multidisciplinary academic audience, including students and faculty, artists, architects, and planners, as well as the non-specialist general public interested in visual arts, architecture, and urban literature.

Speaker Bio:

Esra Akcan is a professor and the Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory in the Department of Architecture, and the Resident Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University. She is the author of Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House (Duke University Press, 2012); Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (Reaktion/Chicago University Press, 2012, with Sibel Bozdoğan), Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA-1984/87 (Birkhäuser/De Gruyter University Press, 2018), Building in Exile: Bruno Taut (Niggli, 2018, with Bernd Nicolai), Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture (CCA, 2022), and co-edited Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination (with Iftikhar Dadi, Routledge, 2023). Currently, she is writing Right-to-Heal: Architecture in Transitions After Conflicts and Disasters.

Iftikhar Dadi is the John H. Burris Professor of Art History in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies. He is the author of Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Lahore Cinema: Between Realism and Fable (University of Washington Press, 2022), and co-edited Lines of Control (Green Cardamom, 2012); Unpacking Europe (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2001, with Salah Hassan); and Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination (with Esra Akcan, Routledge, 2023). He co-curated exhibitions, including Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (Sharjah Art Foundation 2022 and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art 2023); Lines of Control (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, 2012 and Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2013); Tarjama/Translation (Queens Museum of Art, 2009 and Herbert F. Johnson Museum, 2010); and Unpacking Europe (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, 2001)