Andrew Herscher, assistant professor of architecture and urban planning, will present at the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Cultures symposium entitled: Spaces of Exception: Social Marginality and Racialized Inequalities in the 21st Century, on Friday, May 28, 2010.
Herscher will present the “Inhuman Witnesses and Invisible Victims: Satellite Surveillance of Human Rights Abuses.” His work explores the architectural and urban media of political violence, cultural memory, collective identity, and human rights, focusing on modern and contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information
The keynote will be presented by Ramón A. Gutiérrez.
More about Herscher:
Herscher received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2002. His work explores the architectural and urban media of political violence, cultural memory, collective identity, and human rights, focusing on modern and contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. He has been particularly involved in the Balkans, where he has worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as an investigator and expert witness on the war-time destruction of cultural heritage; directed the Department of Culture of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo; and co-founded and co-directed the NGO, Kosovo Cultural Heritage Project.
His scholarly work has appeared in such publications as Architectural History, Assemblage, Grey Room, Harvard Design Magazine, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Oxford Art Journal, and Theory and Event. His book, Violence Taking Place: The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict, was published by Stanford University Press in 2010 in the series “Cultural Memory in the Present.” At the University of Michigan, he is jointly appointed to the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Department of Art History. From 2005 to 2009, he also coordinated the Rackham Interdisciplinary Seminar on Human Rights.