From secret laboratories to monumental infrastructures and the many landscapes of war, energy, and waste in between, nuclear power is at the core of a vast and radically understudied array of 20th c. architectures. Central to the most iconic architectural images of the post-war era while also rendered invisible in apparently unseen wastelands, atomic weapons, nuclear reactors, and atmospheric fallout eventually attracted intense architectural attention. Drawing on multiple literatures, the seminar explores how the nuclear penetrated beyond warscapes to enter even the private spaces of the domestic realm and the human body.

Recent monographs and thematic studies have shaped our understanding of Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's life and work, but some aspects that speak to larger formations in the history of modern architecture have been persistently ignored. Namely, this was her engagement in international resistance networks, her work in the peace and denuclearization movements, as well as the international women's movement. The course revisits these themes in the context of debates in modern architecture to excavate multiple figures from Austria, Turkey, Poland, Hungry, Germany, and France, but also Mexico, Chile, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

How do spatial configurations determine epistemological frameworks and vice versa? This class considers how notions of frames, fields, intervals, and gaps have shaped humanistic enquiry and art historical scholarship in particular. While highlighting case studies and implications for the study and historiography of modern and contemporary art, readings engage other subfields and disciplines, including philosophy, media studies, literary theory, and anti-colonial studies. Topics treated include field formation; reflexivity; interpretive models of surface and depth, the geopolitics of geometry; and issues of autonomy, liminality, and bordering.