Making and Unmaking Property — A Public Symposium
Architectural historians and scholars of racial capitalism examine how property is fabricated and destroyed through design, law, and political struggle.
Why we picked this
Property feels natural until you look at the legal fictions, architectural decisions, and acts of violence that actually produce it. This symposium has the scholars to show exactly how the sausage gets made.
This half-day symposium at Columbia’s Buell Center asks a deceptively simple question: how is property made, and how is it unmade? The answer turns out to involve architectural objects, legal instruments, hereditary compacts, actuarial assessments, and also sabotage, arson, and destruction. The organizers, Buell Fellows Sonali Dhanpal and Chelsea Spencer, bring together architectural historians with scholars of racial capitalism, colonialism, and law.
Presenters include Heba Alnajada, Bench Ansfield, Lisa Haber-Thomson, R. H. Lossin, Bryan E. Norwood, and Bhavani Raman. The range of expertise means the symposium will move from the legal architecture of slavery to contemporary displacement, tracing how property regimes are both built and broken.
Free and open to the public in Fayerweather 209, with online attendance available. Runs from 12:00 to 5:00 PM.