Global Cities:  An International Conference

Conference Themes
Conferees will consider a range of topics, including, but not limited to:

• the intersection of arts, humanities, social sciences and architectural theory and practice in an urban setting

• negotiating identity and memory as well as legacies of modernism and postmodernism in public culture

• the impact of the built environment on global media culture and its impact on urban life

The Conference's interdisciplinary, international character
To assure a broad disciplinary perspective, speakers have been invited from a wide variety of fields, including architecture, urban studies, sociology, film, history, political science, geography, and comparative literature.

Participants from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas will offer their diverse perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of urban culture in an era of globalization.

Confirmed Speakers
Among those who have agreed to speak at the conference (listed alphabetically, by last name):

• Ackbar Abbas, University of Hong Kong, Comparative Literature
  Ackbar Abbas is chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and co–director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC) at Hong Kong University.  He has published essays on photography, cinema, architecture, Walter Benjamin, cultural studies and Hong Kong culture.  Recently, he has been working on the problematics of visuality in cities, particularly the relation between cinema and architecture.  His book, Hong Kong:  Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, was published by University of Minnesota Press in 1997.
   

• Dennis Adams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Architecture
  Dennis Adams is a visual artist, internationally renowned for his public interventions and museum installations that address the processes of collective amnesia and social exclusion in the formation and use of architecture and public space.  He is a professor in the Department of Architecture and Director of the Visual Arts Program at MIT.  He lectures frequently around the world and his published writings, interviews and statements have contributed to the discourse about the relationship of art to the urban context.

• Jorge Anibal Iribarne, University of Buenos Aires Architecture, Development & Urbanism
  Jorge Anibal Iribarne is professor and academic secretary of the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the University of Buenos Aires.  He is currently a member of the Planning Council of Buenos Aires and the Assessors and Jurors Board of the Society of Architects of Buenos Aires.
   

• Natasa Durovicova, University of Iowa, International Programs
  Natasa Durovicova is an independent scholar affiliated with International Programs at the University of Iowa.  She has written on a wide range of topics including various European cinemas, their uneven relationship to Hollywood and American culture, to the history of language barriers, as well as on general matters of film historiography.

• John Hertz, University of Puerto Rico, Architecture
  John Hertz is an architect and educator with work published and built in the United States, Mexico, Peru and Brazil.  He is a three time Fulbright Scholar and an NEA grant recipient, with publications and projects most recently featured in the 5ta Bienal de Arquitectura de Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican AIA Honor Awards.  He is also a visiting faculty member at more than a dozen schools throughout the Americas, and is currently dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico.
   

• Craig Hodgetts, Hodgetts +  Fung, Architecture
  Craig Hodgetts is an architect and urban scenarist known for his imaginative use of architectural forms that challenge contemporary cultural fabric, urban evolution, and developing technology.  He and his partner, Hsin–ming Fung, are recipients of the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, as well as the Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  He is a founding partner in Hodgetts + Fung Design Associates and professor of architecture at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
   

• Jennifer Jordan, UW - Milwaukee, Sociology
  Jennifer Jordan is assistant professor of sociology and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.  She is currently at work on a book examining real estate, collective memory, and urban change in post–1989 Berlin.
   

• Timothy Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Political Science
  Tim Luke is professor of political science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  He teaches courses in history of political thought, contemporary political theory and comparative and international politics.  He recently published Ecocritique:  Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy and Culture (1997) and co–edited The Politics of Cyberspace (1998).
   

• Tarek Naga, Naga Studio Architecture, Architecture
  Tarek Naga is a principal architect with Naga Studio Architecture. He was born in Cairo, Egypt and attended Ain Shams University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Pennsylvania.  He taught and lectured at Cal Poly Pomona, Sci Arc, and the University of Minnesota.  His recent exhibits include: Archilab in Orleans, France and Research Architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York.  His current project is the preservation and development of the pyramids plateau.

• Carl Nightingale, University of Massachusetts, History
  Carl Nightingale is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and will be taking up duties at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 2002.  He is the author of On the Edge:  A History of Poor Black Children and Their American Dreams (1993), and he continues to be interested in the subject of inner–city youth.  His current project is called The Global Inner City:  Today's U.S. Ghettos in World–Historical Perspective.

• Jo Noero, Washington University & University of Cape Town, Architecture
  Jo Noero is professor and Ruth and Norman Moore Chair of Architecture at Washington University.  He has been in private practice as Jo Noero Architects in Johannesburg, South Africa from 1984 to present. He has lectured on his architectural work and taught in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the United States, Botswana and Namibia.  His projects and built works have been published in a number of journals.  In addition, Jo Noero has received international and national awards for architectural design including the Ruth and Ralph Erskine Fellowship from the Nordic Association of Architects in 1993, nine Awards of Merit from the Institute of South African Architects for Outstanding Design, and 3 Project Awards and an Award of Excellence from the Institute of South African Architects for the Soweto Careers Center in 1994.  Recently, he won a commission to design the Apartheid Museum in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Some of his other projects include Cape Town's Gugulethu Sports Centre and GAPP's Langa station.
   

• Tasha Oren, UW–Milwaukee, Journalism & Mass Communication
  As assistant professor, Tasha Oren teaches media in the Journalism and Mass Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She has published work on film, dance and media history and is currently completing a book on the early history of broadcasting in Israel.

• Catherine Russell, Concordia University (Montreal), Film Studies
  Catherine Russell is associate professor of Film Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.  She is the author of Narrative Mortality:  Death Closure and New Wave Cinemas (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 1985); and Experimental Ethnography:  The Work of Film in the Age of Video (Durham NC:  Duke University Press, 1999).  She is currently working on a book on Mikio Naruse and Japanese Woman's Film, with research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

• Peter Sands, UW–Milwaukee, English
  Peter Sands is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.  He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing, tutoring, computer–mediated pedagogy, science fiction, utopianism, research methods, and rhetorical and literary studies.  He participates in many local and national projects, including the electronic democracy project.  He is currently writing a book on utopian and rhetorical theory.
   

• Saskia Sassen, University of Chicago, Sociology
  Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.  Her most recent books are Guests and Aliens (New York:  New Press 1998) and Globalization and its Discontents (New York:  New Press 1998).  The Global City is coming out in a new updated edition in 2001.  Her edited volume, Cities and their Cross–border Networks, will appear in 2001 with Routledge.  Her books have been translated into ten languages.  She is co–director of the Economy Section of the Global Chicago Project and is chair of the newly formed Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security Committee of the SSRC.
   

• Dick Sikkes, Architectenburo Roeleveld–Sikkes, Architecture
  Dick Sikkes graduated from the Technical University in Delft in 1978 with a concentration in Architecture.  Shortly thereafter, with partners Aad Roeleveld and Jan van Huizen, he established an architectural office in Den Haag.  This office, Roeleveld–Sikkes, has grown to approximately forty–five employees in the last twenty–three years.  The office has worked on a number of residential and commercial projects in both the urban and suburban fabric of the Netherlands.  Through careful intervention, Roeleveld–Sikkes has established a reputation as an office where not only physical form, but also use, stands central to projects.

• Harry Van Oudenallen, UW–Milwaukee, Architecture
  Harry Van Oudenallen has been professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee since 1979 and is involved in the study of irregular settlement development in Latin America.  The nature of participatory processes in neighborhood development and the makeup of the public realm as egalitarian settings are the crux of his academic interests in urban development and architecture.  He has an award–winning firm in Milwaukee, Arquitectura, Inc., with a broad program of design emphases, from small to large projects.  Professor Van Oudenallen was raised outside of the United States and brings a uniquely global perspective to his study, his classes, and his architecture.

Registration and more information

• Conference registration form    (.pdf format)  

• For more information on this very exciting event, please contact Dr. Patrice Petro at ppetro@uwm.edu or 414–229–4253.