Upcoming Events

Our institutions are receiving yet another unearned privilege—the privilege to be shaken. When the Master of Environmental Design students formed the Working Group in 2020, we joined forces with activists, educators and students in and beyond the academy to further an evolving set of conversations about the destructive whiteness of our institutional and professional practices. This year, we open up to the messy, collaborative work of seeking global solidarities against racist, colonial and extractive logics while holding space for difference. Our aim is to revisit, reimagine and renegotiate from a place of collective healing and justice.

We are expanding the ongoing conversations on racial justice and spatial practices by considering multiple struggles linked to race, including apartheid, occupation, and environmental collapse. Of the many resources currently circulating, below is a small and incomplete subset. It is offered only as an entry point to a constellation of evidence and action. This page will also host updates about upcoming MED-sponsored events during the 2021-22 academic year. Many of these events will be crafted in collaboration with allied organizations and friends here at YSoA. In addition, we invite like-minded students in research-centered programs beyond Yale to engage with us and coordinate our efforts in the broader work against racism and oppression. Feel free to reach out to us at ysoa.med@gmail.com with introductions, inquiries and ideas. We are looking for allies far and wide.

Our Friends & Allies

Equality in Design YSOA (EID)

The Yale Chapter of National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (Yale NOMAS)

Indigenous Scholars of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD)

The SPACE/RACE reading list is the collective effort of a group of architectural historians, art historians, architects, and urbanists. It was initiated in reaction to the August 2017 events in Charlottesville, and it continues to grow.

Relevant Yale Courses: This is a partial and growing list of Graduate and Undergraduate Yale courses that may be relevant to studies of race and inequality as it is inscribed in space. Broad in scope, it includes courses from various disciplines and practices. It is only intended as a resource as students organize their studies. Please contact YSOA.MED@gmail.com with additional courses that may not appear here.

Thanks to Dean Deborah Berke, Associate Dean Sunil Bald, Laura Pappalardo, Carina Gormley and Claire Gorman.