HIG-Sponsored Paper Session “Interior Spaces of Crime and Coercion” for SAH 2025 Annual International Conference-DEADLINE EXTENDED
The deadline to submit proposals to the HIG sponsored paper session “Interior Spaces of Crime and Coercion” at the upcoming Society of Architectural Historians 2025 Annual International Conference, April 30–May 4, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia, has been extended to Sunday, June 23, 11:59pm CDT.
The deadline to submit proposals to the HIG sponsored paper session “Interior Spaces of Crime and Coercion” at the upcoming Society of Architectural Historians 2025 Annual International Conference, April 30–May 4, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia, has been extended to Sunday, June 23, 11:59pm CDT.
To really appreciate architecture,” says Bernard Tschumi in Advertisements for Architecture, “you may even need to commit a murder.” This panel considers the interior spaces that pertain to crimes and other forbidden actions. It calls for scholarship that looks at rooms where “wrong” things are done—spaces of transgression—as well as the more frequently studied spaces of “correction.” The latter are entwined with ideas of modernity, from Piranesi’s Carceri to Foucault on Bentham’s Panopticon. The former—the scenes of the crime—are themselves subjects of study by historians of criminology like Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, and the journal Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies. The witness borne by Forensic Architecture has become critical to architecture culture. Crime scenes are also created by makers of fictions, designed for “solving the case” or to show the transgressor as a hero. The session defines both “crime” spaces and correctional/punitive ones broadly; they can include the non-physical spaces of theory (e.g. Branzi, Grosz, Tschumi).
The session invites papers that address the topic in relation to any geographical area, historical period or fictional context. We invite papers on locales of unlawful sexual encounters; “fake” crime scenes for training criminologists; rooms in police stations or courthouses; facilities for the “criminally insane;” the operating rooms of “curative” surgeries performed on the lawless; counselors’ rooms in “conversion” camps for gay teens; and other rooms where transgression is fought in the name of public safety or morality. We invite analyses of carceral and criminal spaces of the imagination, such as Piranesi’s, or Freddy Krueger’s furnace room. Papers that explore new methodological approaches are particularly encouraged.
This session is organized by the SAH Historic Interiors Affiliate Group.
Session Chair: David Samson, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
