Summer Faculty Fellow Reflection

IRENE HWANG

2021 SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW reflection

A rare and invaluable turbo boost to scholarship

Even though architecture straddles two realms, that of the fine arts and that of the practical and utilitarian, the outcomes of architectural thinking and making continue to be most celebrated, analyzed, and documented for their aesthetic significance as art objects. Pivotal Constructions of Unseen Events proposes a new approach to understanding the period of 1871-2020 in the history of the United States. This approach narrates—through writing and visuals—the history of five architectures as pivotal events in American history, recasting architecture’s historical significance not solely as a diagnostic clue to history (an artifact), but rather as an act or set of acts (an event) that transform(s) and shape(s) history in unexpected and significant ways.

Thanks to the opportunity to complete the summer fellowship program at the Institute for the Humanities, Pivotal Constructions has become a major component of my scholarly focus and disciplinary contribution. While five weeks is nothing when compared to the decades of our overall academic careers, the summer fellowship was a rare and invaluable turbo boost to my scholarship, where my interest in establishing Pivotal Constructions as a work of public scholarship would not have been possible otherwise. It was wonderfully invigorating to make this significant advancement in my own work, and absolutely inspiring to witness similar experiences unfolding in my fellow fellows. So often in the course of my own intellectual growth, I’ve been torn between what “I am expected to do” and what “I want to do.” The summer fellowship has been the single-most significant opportunity I have had where those two divergent priorities came together to be mutually beneficial; the place where I had the time, headspace, and support (camaraderie and fellowship) to forge ahead with an untested intellectual endeavor, and to emerge from the process with confidence, significant work product, and solid footing for sustaining a body of research that is both fulfilling and valued.

—Irene Hwang is Lecturer III in architecture