This International Workshop brings together scholars from several disciplines and intellectual domains concerned with aspects of urbanism and the military that are largely neglected in past and recent scholarship. The results of the gathering will be a volume of articles derived from it, as well as a special issue of the journal Cultural Politics.  The project is an extension and development of an article by Ryan Bishop and Greg Clancey (“The City as Target, or Perpetuation and Death,” in Bishop, Phillips and Yeo, eds. Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and Globalization Processes, NY and London: Routledge, 2003).  The workshop continues research that the organizers and participants have pursued on the relations between modernist aesthetics and military technology, as well as on urbanism. The “City as Target” article concerns those aspects of urbanism relatively underdeveloped in the vast literature on cities: aspects related to emergency, militarization of urban space, including airspace, and aspects of weaponry that have powerful impact on urban life.  The workshop and resulting publications will reflect the cutting edge of interdisciplinary studies.

City as Target Workshop Participants

Organizers

Ryan Bishop, NUS (Assoc. Prof. of English and American Studies)

Gregory Clancey, NUS (Asst. Prof. of History)

John Phillips, NUS (Assoc. Prof. of English)

Confirmed International Participants:

1. Pal Ahluwalia, Professor of Politics, Goldsmiths

2. Verena Andermatt Conley, Harvard University (Professor, Dept. of Literature)

3. John Armitage, University of Northumbria (Head of Multidisciplinary Studies)

4. Ti-Nan Chi, Director, Z Architects & HEG NGO, and lecturer at The Architectural School, Bergen Norway

5. Jordan Crandall, University of California, San Diego (Assistant Professor of Visual Arts; media theorist and artist)

6. Nick Cullather, Indiana University (Associate Professor of History)

7. Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent (Director of TCS Centre)

8. Steve Graham, University of Durham  (Professor of Geography)

9. Shekhar Krishnan, Executive Member, CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai (shekhar@crit.org.in) 

10. Simon Marvin, University of Salford (Professor and Co-director of the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF) and the United Utilities Chair of Sustainable Urban and Regional Development)

11. Dr. Suzuki Hiroyuki, Professor of architectural history in the faculty of engineering, Tokyo University

12. Nigel Thrift, Oxford University (Professor of Cultural Geography)

13. Tjebbe van Tijen, Librarian and Curator (University Library of Amsterdam and International Institute of Social History, creator of Imaginary Museum Projects (IMP), Amsterdam and The Unbombing the World Project)

14. Sharon Traweek, UCLA (Professor of History of Science)

15. Tom Vanderbilt, freelance writer (author of Survival City: Adventures among the Ruins of Atomic America, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002)

16. Eyal Weizman, Architect (based in Tel Aviv and London)

Confirmed NUS and Local Participants

16. Irina Aristakhova, NUS (Asst. Prof. of Information Management)

17. Chua Beng Huat, NUS (Prof. of Sociology)

18. Irving Goh, (Doctoral Student EGS)

19. Robbie Goh, NUS (Assoc. Prof. of English)

20. Li Shiqiao, NUS (Assoc. Prof. of Architecture)

21. William Lim (architect and author)

22. Rajeev Patke, NUS (Assoc. Prof. English)

22. James Sidaway, NUS (Assoc. Prof. of Geography)