
In the Daylight of Our Existence
Architectural History and the Promise of Queer Theory
S.E. Eisterer(Editor)
gta Verlag
Published on 21. July 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-3-85676-475-3 (ISBN)
Description
"Our survival requires that we alter our environment so that we can live and so that we can hold each other's hands and so that we can kiss each other on the streets, and in the daylight of our existence, without terror and without violent and sometimes fatal reactions from the busybodies of America."
Black feminist poet, author, activist and professor June Jordan wrote these words in 1991 for an address to the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Student Association at Stanford University. In the address, she encouraged radical alterations of the built environment as crucial to what she called "A New Politics of Sexuality." She did not tell her listeners what this altered environment would look like, but she elicited their imagination in conceiving of a place for living, intimacy, and visibility, what that space would feel like, and what else it could make possible.
Tracing the coalitional efforts of feminist, queer, and trans organizations in housing, health care, and artistic spaces, this book takes up Jordan's theoretical premise to work against normative ideas about gender and sexuality through environmental transformation. It presents methods for crafting LGBTQIA+ histories of architecture by investigating planning, resistance, and refusal all in favor of richer communal lives in New York City, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Toronto, and the Mexican borderlands. A wide range of poems, meeting notes, memos, zines, photos, artwork, and blueprints offer insight into the intersection of architectural history and gender studies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Zürich
Switzerland
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Card cover
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
112
ca. 140 Abbildungen
Dimensions
Height: 145 mm
Width: 225 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
496 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-85676-475-3 (9783856764753)
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Editor
S.E. Eisterer ist Assistant Professor für Architekturgeschichte und -theorie an der School of Architecture der Princeton University und Gründungsmitglied der Queer Space Working Group. 2023/24 ist sie Senior Fellow der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Contributions
ISNI: 0000 0004 9810 5846