The Art & Architectural History Department and the Historic Preservation & Community
Planning Program of the College of Charleston invite paper proposals for Suffragette City, an
interdisciplinary symposium on gender, politics, and the built environment. The aim of this
symposium is to consider new research on the intersections of gender and politics in past
and ongoing efforts to shape and reshape the physical form, social fabric, and
conceptualization of cities worldwide, including design, development, preservation,
representation, and other methods of creation and reform.

In many different societies and historical moments, women—among other gendered
groups—have worked individually and collectively to transcend social, political, cultural, and
economic restrictions to effect change in their communities. From the building campaigns
of the Regent-Pharaoh Hatshepsut to the urban politics of patronage in the European
Renaissance, from charitable reform campaigns in Victorian tenement districts to militant
resistance against neighborhood demolition in the Automobile Age, women’s efforts to
exert their wills in the built environment have not only had powerful effects in the districts,
city centers, parks, streets, and public squares they call home, but have also inevitably called
into question the gendered social boundaries they transgressed in the process.

Please submit an abstract of your paper proposal, not to exceed 300 words, by
the end of the day on W ednesday, July 1, 2015 to both Nathaniel R. Walker
at walkernr@cofc.edu and Gayle L. Goudy at goudygl@cofc.edu.