The Education of African-American Architects: Re-Thinking du Bois’ Principles, "About Us, For Us, and Near Us" 

A confluence of events led to the creation of the author's seminar on gender and race in contemporary architecture, prompted by his participation in a campuswide workshop on teaching diversity at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The vast majority has been architecture majors, but because it is cross-listed with Gender and Women's Studies, the course has drawn students from advertising, sociology, urban planning, English literature, economics, anthropology, and other disciplines. Guest speakers routinely add their critical perspectives to the course. Carla Jackson Bell, then of Tuskegee University, presented her research on overlooked African American architects. Outgrowths of the seminar have included a co-authored article with course alumna Meltem Gurel on 'The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and Architectural History Texts', published in the Journal of Architectural Education.