Gail Dubrow
Architecture, College of Design
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

IAS Faculty Fellow, Fall 2020

Memoir as a Mode of Inquiry and Expression in Environmental Design and Planning for Social Justice

This semester I am working on a collection of autobiographical short stories set, primarily, in a Jewish section of the Bronx and white ethnic section of Queens during my childhood, between 1954 and 1972. During these years the racial geography of NYC’s outer boroughs shifted considerably and with it came a sharpening of structural inequalities in housing, public schools, and services. Drawing on family history and memory, as well as more established research methods in the field of urban planning, these stories highlight outer borough migration, school segregation and integration, and the emergence of an interrelated set of social movements to shed light on the period and place.

Gail Dubrow is a Professor of Architecture and History and a Distinguished Professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She is the author of Sento at Sixth and Main, with Donna Graves; and Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation, with Jennifer Goodman. She is currently working on a book about how American architects of Japanese ancestry navigated racism during the first half of the 20th century.

This series features an IAS Residential Fellow—a Faculty Fellow, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow, or Community of Scholars Fellow. Each profile is written by the participant as a way to share their projects, goals, and experiences as part of their time at the IAS.