Writing a Global History through Translation: An Afterword on Pedagogical Perspectives

Abstract

This text proposes a theory of translation to transform architectural history surveys into introductory courses of global, intertwined histories.

Keywords:

• translation
• intertwined history
• pedagogy
• global history of architecture

Notes

1. Gayatri Spivak, “The Politics of Translation,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 179–200, quotation 180.

2. Esra Akcan, Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).

3. Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius (Bath: Palazzo Editions, 2011, original 1936); and Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967, original 1941).

4. See, for instance: Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980); Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Architektur und Städtebau des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, Germany: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1980); and William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon, 1982).

5. See for instance: Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and Philip Johnson, The International Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995, original 1932); Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design; and Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976, original 1969).

6. For surveys, see for instance: Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Jean-Louis Cohen, The Future of Architecture Since 1889 (London: Phaidon, 2012); and Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Architecture since 1400 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). For a dictionary of buildings, see: Mark Jarzombek, Vikramaditya Prakash, and Francis D.K. Ching, A Global History of Architecture (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006).

7. The following examples are based on my own introductory global history of architecture course at the Department of Architecture at Cornell University.