The City is Ours: New Mandel Series Examines the Politics of Urban Design
This year the Mandel Center for the Humanities continues its interdisciplinary book talk series with Professor Muna Guvenc’s This City is Ours: Spaces of Political Mobilization and Imaginaries of Nationhood in Turkey. This series, begun in 2023- 2024, takes a recent publication by a Brandeis faculty member and hosts a series of three conversations over the course of the year, bringing in panelists from across academic humanities disciplines and humanities practice.
Previous series have featured Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean’s Non-sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century by Professor Faith Smith (English/AAAS), and Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance by Professor Ramie Targoff (English/Italian Studies).
These talks enable scholars and practitioners in the humanities to engage a variety of methodological and interpretive perspectives when wrestling with questions critical to a vast array of humanities disciplines. Previous conversations have examined questions about heritage preservation, voices at the fringes of a literary tradition, recovering voices from the archive, national borders and translation.
This year, the series will feature a Housing Roundtable on October 27 entitled Housing Justice: Urban Inequality in the U.S., Turkey, and Latin America featuring sociologist Sarah Mayorga (Brandeis) and art historian Gabriel A. Arboleda (Amherst College), in addition to Dr. Guvenc. It will be moderated by Professor Rachel McKane (Brandeis).
A second event on November 17, entitled Memory Under Construction: Making and Unmaking Monuments, will feature Dr. Guvenc, along with Professor Lawrence Vale, Associate Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and Professor Daniel Breen (Brandeis, Legal Studies). It will be moderated by Brandeis art historian Professor Peter Kalb.
A final event entitled Kurdish Lives in Urban Turkey: Methodological Perspectives, will take place in spring with Dr. Guvenc and Professor Yuval Evri (Brandeis NEJS).
Description of the Book (Cornell University Press)
The City is Ours accounts [for] how urban politics mediated the rise of Kurdish nationhood and mobilization in Diyarbakır, Turkey. Muna Güvenç elucidates how urban and architectural forms are not merely the backdrop of the cityscape where political struggles unfold; they constitute the very essence of these conflicts. Güvenç posits that urban spaces offer "wiggle room", turning oppression into chances for dissent and resilience and offering opportunities for vulnerable minority groups to create sociopolitical blocs and mobilizations.
Güvenç takes readers from municipal halls to the streets and illustrates how, in the early 2000s, pro-Kurdish parties harnessed urban planning to resist coercion and foster Kurdish mobilization in Turkey. Güvenç challenges readers to rethink urban neoliberalism, new forms of nationalisms and mobilizations, and the ways they shape cities and politics. The City is Ours is a profound awakening, an invitation to all architects and urban planners, urging them to rise above the confines of their blueprints and embrace the vast tapestry of the politics of space.
Monday, October 27, 4:00–5:30 PM
Title: Housing Justice: Urban Inequality in the U.S., Turkey, and Latin America
Location: Mandel Forum
Participants: Sarah Mayorga (Brandeis), Gabriel A. Arboleda (Amherst College), Muna Güvenç (Brandeis)
Moderator: Rachel McKane (Brandeis)
Monday, November 17, 2:30–3:50 PM
Title: Memory Under Construction: Making and Unmaking Monuments
Location: Mandel Forum
Participants: Lawrence Vale (MIT), Dan Breen (Brandeis), Muna Güvenç (Brandeis)
Moderator: Peter Kalb (Brandeis)
Title: Kurdish Lives in Urban Turkey: Methodological Perspectives
Participants: Yuval Evri (Brandeis), Muna Güvenç (Brandeis)