Sites Lacking Sight: Architectural Imperialism in Library Design

Abstract

Slide deck and presentation notes for "Sites Lacking Sight: Architectural Imperialism in Library Design." Academic library architecture embodies the university's need to demonstrate monumentalism, authority, power, and knowledge through the built environment. This presentation critically examines settler colonial narratives in library architecture (exterior and interior) and considers implications for library users across historically marginalized communities and the university setting at large.

Presented at the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) 47th Annual Conference in 2019 as part of the "In Process: Subverting and Dismantling Institutional Hegemony in Libraries" session. In this roundtable, the presenters consider cognitive and cultural imperialism as manifested in library spaces and exclusionary to a multitude of voices. In addition to considering the colonialist origins of many institutions of higher learning—and in the formation of librarianship itself—and the way in which it enables and reifies certain ways of knowing, the panelists will also consider opportunities for subversion and destabilization of visible and invisible structures of power within the library. Presentations address initiatives that challenge institutional hegemony in programming, instruction, library spaces and design, and collections.