Constructing Race and Architecture 1400–1800, Part 1

Editor’s Introduction For architectural historians, the 2020 publication of Race and Modern Architecture, edited by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson, brought the presence of anti-Black racism in our discipline home in an unforgettable way. The book appeared as the Black Lives Matter movement captured global attention following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, and, as Maura Lucking observes in her review in this issue of JSAH, “it is difficult to recall an academic anthology so appropriately timed and so desperately needed as this volume. ” Race andModern Architecture offers a critical impetus for self-reflection among scholars in the field: as Cheng, Davis, and Wilson note on the first page of their book, even as “architectural historians have traditionally avoided the topic of race,” racial thought has profoundly shaped not only architecture but also the discipline of architectural history. Following the invitation that Race and Modern Architecture has extended to scholars to open up an urgent and muchneeded conversation about race and architectural history, the JSAH roundtable “Constructing Race and Architecture 1400–1800” represents a collective effort to engage in dialogue and stimulate new kinds of thinking around these issues. This is the first of two planned sets of brief essays devoted to this topic, with the second expected to appear in the December 2021 issue of JSAH. Although the journal’s traditional mainstay is the extended scholarly article, the roundtable format represents a valuable addition that opens conversations to a broad range of scholars working on many strands of a given topic—in this case, the intersection of race and architecture in the early modern period. The inclusion of diverse voices and viewpoints is critical to this project, making a stronger and more powerful statement than could be made by a single individual. Such a project can hardly claim to be comprehensive, but in aiming for greater diversity and complexity, we seek to better represent both the membership of SAH and the field at large. It is only a first step, but one of many to come in our ongoing effort to promote and ensure inclusion at JSAH. While the issues raised in Race andModern Architecture provoke questions about all aspects of the study of architectural history, this roundtable focuses on the early modern period. Why should we begin with this particular chronological cross section? Not only did the contours of the study of architectural history as we know it today first take shape in the early modern world, but the fundamental tools and principles that guide the study of architectural historians also trace their origins to this time, including the architectural treatise, the notion of the architect as an intellectual, the codification of standard building typology, and the systematic use of standard architectural drawing conventions. To understand the role of race in architecture, we need to examine how race intersected with these elemental materials, practices, and systems of belief that have governed our study of the field itself. At the same time, despite ongoing efforts to write a more global architectural history, the early modern architectural canon, firmly grounded in European theory and practice, still retains a privileged position in the study of architectural history. How do the narratives that we attach to these buildings change when we acknowledge that race lies at the core of the discipline? Here we must consider the sustained interest of early modern architects and theorists in the forms and ideology of classicism, given that the history of classicism itself, predicated upon the erection of clear distinctions between specific groups, ranks, and categories, must also be understood as a history of race. Viewed through this lens, the concerted efforts of early modern architects to revive classical models suggest profound if largely still unrecognized connections between the history of early modern architecture and racial thinking. Finally, critical race studies scholars locate the origins of our contemporary race-consciousness in the early modern period, when expanding global horizons led to new forms of contact, conflict, and exchange, and the redistribution of ethnic populations around the world. What impact did this race-consciousness have on early modern thinking about the built environment? And, conversely, how did the development of the early modern built