"Spatializing Histories and Nationhood: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie at the Foot of Temple Mount": A presentation by Alona Nitzan-Shiftan November 30, 2009

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She studies post-WWII architectural culture, particularly in Israel and the US, and focuses her research on cross-cultural contexts in light of recent thought in the fields of nationalism, Orientalism and post-colonialism. She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M.Arch.S from MIT, a B.Arch cum laude from the Technion, and was recently the Mary Davis and the Kress Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery. She was a Lady Davis Fellow at the Technion, and received grants from the trusts of Arthur Goldreich (Bezalel) William Sandberg (Israel Museum), and the Aga Khan Program (MIT and Harvard). Her publications appeared in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism, Harvard Design Magazine, Jama'a, and Thresholds as well as in edited volumes such as The End of Tradition. She currently works on "Israelizing Jerusalem: the Politics of Architecture and Beauty in a Contested City" and on I.M. Pei's East Building, the subject of an exhibition she co-curated at the National Gallery. Additional cosponsorship provided by the IAS collaborative Identity in the Mediterranean World: From the Middle Ages to Today.

Prof. Nitzan-Shiftan's visit is hosted by the Design, Architecture, and Culture Group of Quadrant, a joint initiative of the University of Minnesota Press and the Institute for Advanced Study. Quadrant is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu/quadrantcal.php