Sex and Space—Gender in Architecture
Talinn Grigor
Art History
Talinn Grigor is a professor of art history in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. She received a B.Arch. from University of Southern California, a M.S. and a Ph.D. from MIT. Her research focuses on the cross-pollination of art, architecture, and (post)colonial and critical theory, focused on Iran and West India. Her books include Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014) and Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009). She is on the editorial board of Art Journal.
A Message to Students and Parents
"As a fourth-year architectural student, I spent nine months studying and traveling architecture in twelve countries in Western Europe. After a study abroad in Lake Como, I spent the next four months catching the train to a different country or city casing a monument. I filled several sketchbooks with images of both ancient, medieval, and modern architectural masterpiece. I also hung out at museums and public spaces. Those experiences of looking and touching outstanding edifices formed the bedrock of my education at MIT and then my career. Passing on that kind of close looking, touching, and understanding spatial formations in relationship to our modernist identities, both personal and societal, is something I hope to do in this course."