The University of Minnesota Press have just published a new and updated edition of John Tagg’s The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, first published in Great Britain in 1988. The new edition, described by the press as “a powerhouse in photographic theory,” includes a previously unpublished introductory essay, “The Burden of Recollection: Thinking Photography After Foucault,” as well as a striking new cover design. The Burden of Representation has been translated into Spanish, Ukrainian and simplified Chinese and a traditional Chinese edition will be published in Spring 2022 by VOP Books in Taipei City, Taiwan.
Professor Kirkwood has edited a special issue of Critical Inquiry on Surplus Data along with Orit Halpern, Patrick Jagoda, and Leif Weatherby. His article “From Work to Proof of Work: Meaning and Value after Blockchain” has also been published in the new issue. Click here for more.
Designing, researching, and educating, alumnus Jesse McCormick is literally building an impressive career as an architect on a foundation that was laid at Binghamton University. He initially started his undergraduate career studying English Literature, but eventually added a second major in Art History with a concentration in Architecture and Urban Studies. While he always had an interest in architecture, this passion was further fostered by coursework taken in the Art History department.
McCormick also cites his advisor, Professor Julia Walker, with helping him achieve his goal to eventually go on and work in the field as well as continue his education at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. After receiving a Master’s degree in architecture from Columbia in 2018, McCormick has taught in various schools of architecture around New York and is currently an instructor at Syracuse University. His work and research have been recognized at the Istanbul Design Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art’s Young Architects Program, and the Oslo Architecture Triennale.
While already having accomplished so much, McCormick feels that his favorite moments after graduating from Binghamton University were not the occasions in which he received awards or when his projects are completed, but instead are the instances in which he collaboratively solves a problem with others, either in an academic or professional setting. Problems are plenty in the field of architecture, and one pressing issue he seeks to address is the growing moral dissonance that architects endure throughout their careers. He hopes that in his teaching he can give his students the tools and opportunities to think in certain ways that will empower them not to make the compromises that the field currently demands.
Many years after his undergraduate career, Binghamton always has a place in McCormick’s mind. He believes that the area could benefit from a community land trust or from following the guidance of groups such as Binghamton Tenants United. Collectives and cooperatives seeking to uphold and expand tenants’ rights could further serve Binghamton University students and more adequately meet students’ varied spatial needs in a deindustrialized city filled with single-family homes.
In a podcast episode titled “‘Grounded by a Set of Relations’: Nancy Um on ‘Horizontal’ Cultures Within Art History”, Nancy Um describes her experience of conducting fieldwork in Yemen, particularly as a young female scholar, and reflects on the constraints of focusing on an area marked by geopolitical instability. She recounts her decision to focus on bodies of water instead of territories, and how this approach destabilizes some of the traditional organizing principles of the discipline, but allows her to pursue global art history on a local scale. Finally, she considers digital art history as a site of access, and as part of a dynamic approach to her own work changing over time. The podcast can be found here.
For years following reunification, Berlin was the largest construction site in Europe, with striking new architecture proliferating throughout the city in the 1990s and early 2000s. Among the most visible and the most contested of the new projects were those designed for the national government and its related functions.
Berlin Contemporary explores these buildings and plans, tracing their antecedents while also situating their iconic forms and influential designers within the spectacular world of global contemporary architecture. Close studies of these sites, including the Reichstag, the Chancellery, and the reconstruction of the Berlin Stadtschloss (now known as the Humboldt Forum), demonstrate the complexity of Berlin’s political and architectural “rebuilding”—and reveal the intricate historical negotiations that architecture was summoned to perform in the reunified capital.
Binghamton Art History 