Taubman College Glover named fellow by National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies
Associate Professor Will Glover has received a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies to conduct research in India on a project entitled, “Reformatting Ordinary Life: The Rural-Urban Continuum in 20th century India.” Glover will pursue research during academic year 2011-2012 while based in New Delhi, India.
Synopsis of research
Glover’s research seeks to unpack the history and implications of a broadly ecological concern that structured architectural and planning discourse on the Indian city for much of the twentieth century: namely, how to plan for the proper intermingling of rural and urban worlds brought together by rapid urbanization. The project will trace the emergence of the idea of a rural/urban continuum in India (from an earlier assumption that the two were separate and incommensurable worlds), explore how this continuum was institutionalized in professional planning circuits, and examine in detail a central artifact produced in its wake: the comprehensively-planned “new towns” built by the 100s during the mid-twentieth century in India. The sociological models that explained a transition from “rural” to “urban” life — and the intermediate stages between these two that characterized a “continuum” — became key ingredients in late-twentieth century design discourse directed towards rapid urban growth. The research will thus explore the inherently ecological paradigms that have structured architectural and urban planning discourse on the Indian city, and the paradoxical limits these paradigms may have placed on ecologically sustainable growth.
