Esra Akcan, Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory (AAP), and Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor of Art History and Visual Studies (A&S), recently published Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Turkey, Pakistan, and their European Diasporas (Routledge, 2024), a collection of essays on art and architecture that reveal both distinct and convergent histories, stories, and experiences of late 20th-century Muslim migrations and diasporas in Europe.
“During the second half of the 20th century, enormous compulsory migrations from these two countries resulted in significant Muslim diasporic communities in cities such as London and Berlin, yet they have never been studied together,” says Akcan. “This book brings together an array of architecture and artistic media that responds to the conditions of the diaspora. What we find is that discrimination has been both the cause and result of migration – for example, internal problems have compelled citizens to emigrate, and blatant discriminatory and ideological constructs shape their experiences in their countries of arrival as well.”
The book’s subject matter is largely informed by a 2017 Mellon Collaborative Studies seminar co-taught at Cornell by Akcan and Dadi on the relationship between migration, discrimination, and the city. The seminar, which took place against the backdrop of the largest refugee crisis since World War II due to the war in Syria, prompted reflections on statecraft, neoliberalism, and crony capitalism and addressed matters related to statelessness, citizenship, human rights, and violence. Along with Akcan, Dadi, and other scholars, a number of doctoral students in the class contributed essays to the publication, including Aslihan Günhan, Ecem Sarıçayır, Lara Fresko, and Vinh Phu Pham.
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