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Putra, Yvette 
ORCID: 0000-0001-8219-1872
(2024)
The Elephant in the Room: Classroom Dynamics-Based Barriers to Decolonising Architectural History in Undergraduate, Built-Environment Courses.
In: Developing Architectural History Education in the UK, 27th-28th July 2024, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
I teach architectural history across three newly inaugurated, undergraduate, built-environment courses at the University of Gloucestershire. Teaching in this setting offers the gift of tabula rasa, but it obligates the cultivation of values that will ensure the courses’ relevance and viability in the twenty-first-century context. To this end, I call upon my lived experiences as a woman of colour, with personal and professional knowledges of Global South cultures, and over two decades of architectural education – and industry and academic experience – in Australia. My teaching is also informed by my research, in which I chiefly explore architectural drawings and models, especially those from underrepresented regions, to adopt global and critical perspectives of culture, geography, and temporality. This, ultimately, disrupts the longstanding Eurocentrism of architectural design, history, and practice. In my teaching, I urge students to operate more adaptively and ethically than previous generations of built-environment professionals. This is by, firstly, acknowledging and being receptive to different ways of knowing, seeing, and thinking, and, secondly, engaging in more compassionate and culturally sensitive built-environment praxis. To achieve this, I weave international exemplars and marginalised perspectives into the courses and maintain the freedom of ideas and speech in the classroom. My endeavours are supported by the University and its decolonising ethos, but resistance often and unexpectedly comes from students themselves – their inherent antipathy towards learning history is intensified by the treading of unfamiliar ground. Here, I will discuss the barriers – to decolonising architectural history in undergraduate, built-environment courses – that are circumscribed by classroom dynamics.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Other) |
|---|---|
| Related URLs: | |
| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > NA Architecture |
| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts |
| Depositing User: | Yvette Putra |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Aug 2024 09:19 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Aug 2024 09:19 |
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/14311 |
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