MARGINS AND HYPHENS: 2015 History & Theory Seminars
Friday February 06 / Mechtild Widrich (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Thursday March 12 / Noam M. Elcott (Columbia University)
Thursday April 02 / Esra Akcan (Cornell University)
Thursday April 09 / Timothy Hyde (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
All events / 5pm / SoA / Room N-107
Architectural histories and theories consistently aim for a radical redefinition of their role within broader discourses in the humanities. Acknowledging this persistent appetite for reassessment, this seminar series proposes to frame these concerns according to two basic formatting devices: the hyphen and the margin.
As defined in the Chicago Manual of Style’s section on “Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for Authors,” in order “to leave enough room for handwritten queries, margins of at least one inch should appear on all four sides of the hard copy” of a manuscript. In the most pragmatic sense, the margin serves as the necessary space for the expansion, clarification, and nuancing of the main body of a text. The margin is the liminal space in which a work is demarcated, challenged or even aligned with another entity. It is a critical distance.
On the other hand, the CMS stresses that the “only hyphens that should appear in the manuscript are hyphens that would appear regardless of where they appeared on the page.” Compound words alone, formed by a minimum of two distinct entities, allow for such orthographic figuration. The hyphen, a tool for juxtaposition, amalgamation, synthesis, facilitates the disciplinary frictions that texture the surfaces of architectural discourse.
Margins and hyphens—as spatial, epistemological, and formatting considerations—unavoidably shape documents. In Margins and Hyphens, we seek to bring into focus how they shape critical positions through the texture of writing itself.
Organized by Michael Faciejew, Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Victoria Bugge Øye.
For additional information and to receive pre-circulated papers, please e-mail FACIEJEW@PRINCETON.EDU
