Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific examines the contested landscapes of research infrastructure and settler colonialism. During the 1950s and 60s, as the Cold War accelerated, Big Science sought new frontiers both conceptua...
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ftcolumbiauniv:oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/xnrg-6h08 2024-09-15T18:15:11+00:00 Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific Blanchfield, Caitlin 2024 https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 English eng https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 Architecture Modern Architecture--Political aspects Industrial Military architecture Indians of North America Imperialism Land use--Political aspects Theses 2024 ftcolumbiauniv https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 2024-08-23T04:10:24Z Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific examines the contested landscapes of research infrastructure and settler colonialism. During the 1950s and 60s, as the Cold War accelerated, Big Science sought new frontiers both conceptual and spatial. While the alliance between modern architecture and postwar scientific research has been the subject of significant historical work, the settler colonial politics and land relations ingrained in these large-scale laboratories and research stations has gone under-discussed. Investigating federally-funded research installations constructed from the 1950s-1990s, this dissertation addresses how Cold War-era science participated in the settlement of landscapes perceived as inhospitable through discourses and practices of “modernism.” It also examines Indigenous opposition to these land occupations as acts of self-determination. Covering a wide geography—from the Kitt Peak Observatory on Ioligam Du’ag in the Tohono O’odham Nation, to the Inuvik Research Laboratory in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories of Canada, to the Mauna Kea Observatories on the Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawai‘i this dissertation moves between spaces where the universalism, modernism, and colonialism of the postwar settler colonial project are contested through material practices in the landscape and built environment. These places reveal how settler colonialism contributed to US empire in the twentieth century. Importantly, they also broaden discourses of resistance and refusal, showing how traditional land use, material culture, and mobility practices give rise to resistance movements. This dissertation investigates how different resistance movements protested the construction of research infrastructures on their lands. Across these cases, modern architecture does not operate uniformly. In some instances it is part of a state-initiated modernization project; in others affiliated with military-industrial architecture; and others ... Thesis Inuvik Northwest Territories Columbia University: Academic Commons |
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Columbia University: Academic Commons |
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ftcolumbiauniv |
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English |
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Architecture Modern Architecture--Political aspects Industrial Military architecture Indians of North America Imperialism Land use--Political aspects |
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Architecture Modern Architecture--Political aspects Industrial Military architecture Indians of North America Imperialism Land use--Political aspects Blanchfield, Caitlin Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
topic_facet |
Architecture Modern Architecture--Political aspects Industrial Military architecture Indians of North America Imperialism Land use--Political aspects |
description |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific examines the contested landscapes of research infrastructure and settler colonialism. During the 1950s and 60s, as the Cold War accelerated, Big Science sought new frontiers both conceptual and spatial. While the alliance between modern architecture and postwar scientific research has been the subject of significant historical work, the settler colonial politics and land relations ingrained in these large-scale laboratories and research stations has gone under-discussed. Investigating federally-funded research installations constructed from the 1950s-1990s, this dissertation addresses how Cold War-era science participated in the settlement of landscapes perceived as inhospitable through discourses and practices of “modernism.” It also examines Indigenous opposition to these land occupations as acts of self-determination. Covering a wide geography—from the Kitt Peak Observatory on Ioligam Du’ag in the Tohono O’odham Nation, to the Inuvik Research Laboratory in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories of Canada, to the Mauna Kea Observatories on the Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawai‘i this dissertation moves between spaces where the universalism, modernism, and colonialism of the postwar settler colonial project are contested through material practices in the landscape and built environment. These places reveal how settler colonialism contributed to US empire in the twentieth century. Importantly, they also broaden discourses of resistance and refusal, showing how traditional land use, material culture, and mobility practices give rise to resistance movements. This dissertation investigates how different resistance movements protested the construction of research infrastructures on their lands. Across these cases, modern architecture does not operate uniformly. In some instances it is part of a state-initiated modernization project; in others affiliated with military-industrial architecture; and others ... |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Blanchfield, Caitlin |
author_facet |
Blanchfield, Caitlin |
author_sort |
Blanchfield, Caitlin |
title |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
title_short |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
title_full |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
title_fullStr |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
title_full_unstemmed |
Unsettling Colonial Science: Modern Architecture and Indigenous Claims to Land in North America and the Pacific |
title_sort |
unsettling colonial science: modern architecture and indigenous claims to land in north america and the pacific |
publishDate |
2024 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 |
genre |
Inuvik Northwest Territories |
genre_facet |
Inuvik Northwest Territories |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7916/xnrg-6h08 |
_version_ |
1810452918358245376 |