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Method Acts is an annual series showcasing innovative research methods used by graduate students and emerging scholars in architectural history and adjacent fields. Organized by the Society of Architectural Historians Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC), it aims to create a space for sharing, discussing, and refining methodological approaches to interpreting built environment and material culture histories.

Research methods are political. The scope, subject, mode of address, the accessibility of evidence, and the researcher’s orientation all condition our encounters with archives and the objects we study. As architectural historians in the early phase of our careers, we have the opportunity to orient our research toward emerging and critical frameworks for engaging with historical evidence.

This series intends to address the following questions: How does one engage with inaccessible or non-existent archives? What are the challenges and potential limits in developing an inclusive global architectural historical narrative? As architectural history continues to realign with research methods that engage the populace, activism, and modes of decolonization, we seek opportunities that continue to shape inclusive disciplinary fields.

Through this series, we will discuss how to confront questions of methodology head-on and consider how our interpretive frameworks might expand architectural historiography and its disciplinary boundaries. By rethinking how we relate to our disciplinary frameworks and each other when discussing scholarship, we aim to provide a platform for emerging scholars to discuss alternative research methods. Thus, we encourage submissions from scholars implementing alternative and “nontraditional” methods in their work and methods that reconsider traditional disciplinary boundaries and narratives. 

Method Acts is organized by members of the SAH Graduate Students Advisory Committee. 2024-2025 committee: Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, Charlette Caldwell, Yannick Etoundi, Sylvia Faichney, and Priyanka Sen.

 

Open Call for 2025 Program

Workshops: The participants and intended audience for these workshops are emerging ABD scholars and scholars 1–3 years after graduation from a PhD program. We encourage submissions of in-process ideas, experimental approaches, and not-yet-developed frameworks that can benefit from critical engagement among peers. Each workshop will last approximately 75 minutes and begin with 2 or 3 presentations by doctoral candidates and emerging scholars about their chosen research methods. Approximately ten minutes each, these presentations should include a brief overview of their research topic, followed by an elaborate discussion of their methods. We will host an open discussion for approximately 45 minutes following the presentations.

Speakers are expected to share their material with other speakers and workshop participants beforehand to help facilitate discussion. The presentations will take place in English on Zoom. Although not required to apply, selected presenters of the workshops are required to be current SAH members by the time of the workshops.

Roundtable: Following the workshops, the committee will convene a concluding roundtable where invited scholars known for their research in the field will share their perspectives on methodology. This third event in the series will highlight how methods are implemented as a body of scholarly work advances throughout one’s career.

  • 100–150-word statement in Word or PDF format describing a method you are currently using in your research
  • Current CV (2 pages max)

SAH membership is not required to apply, but all selected presenters must join or have an ongoing valid membership by the event date.

September 18, 2024Application period opens
November 24, 2024, 11:59pm CDTDeadline for submissions
November 25 - December 8, 2024Submission review by committee
December 9-13, 2024Selection and invitation to participate
February 2025Preliminary discussion with presenters
February - March 2025Workshops and Roundtable events

If you have any questions, please reach out to Method Acts 2025 Chair and SAH Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) member Sylvia Faichney at sylvia_faichney@ucsb.edu. General inquiries regarding GSAC can be sent to sah.gsac@gmail.com.

Submit Here


Past Events: 2024 Program

Read abstracts and notes from presenters.

Embodied Silences

February 27, 2024

"The Undecorated: Racecraft and the Pope’s Stronghold in Premodern Caprarola"
Dijana O. Apostolski, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Of Freedom and Discipline: Everyday Queer Spaces in Urban China under Postsocialism"
Nathan Shui, University of California, Berkeley

"Biographic Anthologies and Untold Histories of Architecture in Post-Safavid Iran"
Samira Fathi, Michigan State University

"Refusing Spatial Exclusion: Black Placemaking in the Margins of Brazil’s Capital City"
Luisa Helena Gonçalves de Melo, Tulane University

Ephemeral Architectures

March 12, 2024

"Harem Mystique: Popular Architecture and the 'Orient' ca. 1900"
Sarah Wheat, University of Michigan

“Remediating Environmental Design, 1963-1975”
Shota Vashakmadze, University of California, Los Angeles

"Thinking with Snow"
Phoebe Springstubb, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Born-Digital Files and the Other Story of Practice"
Eliza Pertigkiozoglou, McGill University

Final Workshop

March 25, 2024

Invited Scholars:

Natchee Barnd, Oregon State University

Kenny Cupers, University of Basel

Samia Kirchner, Morgan State University