Call for Papers: Architecture and the kulturkritik
Call for Papers:
Open to 23 June 2024 (Extended Deadline)
Conference:
Society of Architectural Historians, 2025 Annual International Conference April 30–May 4, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia
The architectural critic emerged as a distinct category in the twentieth century but has taken many forms. This panel is concerned with the conception of criticism that emerged in the 1920s, when English critics such as I. A. Richards and F. R. and Q. D. Leavis developed a new paradigm for the analysis and judgement of cultural artefacts. In the stringent project developed by the Leavises in their journal Scrutiny, an attempt was made to elevate criticism to the highest form of intellectual endeavour, providing the moral ground and Updated 04/02/2024 training necessary for social flourishing. Richards’ project was extended in North America with the ‘New Criticism’ movement of close reading and formal analysis. Francis Mulhern has argued that these innovations were part of a broader tradition of kulturkritik, recognisable in the work of Julien Benda, Karl Mannheim, Thomas Mann, José Ortega y Gasset, and extending into the late-twentieth century with the development of cultural studies.
Whilst new paradigms and targets of criticism resulting from social formations and political movements have displaced the centrality of kulturkritik, recent scholarship in English literature and intellectual history has shown the enduring legacy of the practice and institution building activities of kulturkritik—both in the metropole and in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
This panel is interested in the origins and legacy of the kulturkritik and its implications for architectural criticism, which remains under-explored in architectural historiography, seeking contributions that explore national, colonial and postcolonial geographies and interrogate the influence of kulturkritik in architectural discourse through (but not limited to):
The direct influence of kulturkritik on architectural media, histories, and criticism
Concepts, categories and operations of valuation in architectural criticism
Histories of kulturkritik institutions or discourses that targeted architecture
Biographies of architectural critics that deployed kulturkritik
Session Chairs: Nick Beech, University of Birmingham; and Jessica Kelly, London Metropolitan University
Submit a proposal here here.
