“History is not a simple meritocracy: it is a narrative of the past written and revised - or not written at all - by people with agendas.” - Despina Stratigakos, "Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia", Places Journal, June 2013
In 2007, in the nascent days of Wikipedia, Archinecter Quilian Riano posted a call for ‘necters to join in a group online effort to edit the Wikipedia page on Architecture to improve what had been a minimally considered – and minimally accurate – entry.
Now editing has become a social act: on 21 November 2015, you can join the Women In Architecture #wikiD Writing Workshop at the SCI-Arc Kappe Library to engage in the act of “unforgetting women architects”. You can even write about the woman architects you most want the world to know about – just bring some biographical information and enthusiasm for spreading the word. The jointly-sponsored Association for Women in Architecture + Design event will provide Wikipedia editing training during the session.
Find out more at the AWA+D website.
3 Comments
History is not a simple meritocracy: it is a narrative of the past written and revised - or not written at all - by people with agendas.
So true
Coincidentally, I read a fascinating and sad article just this morning in Smithsonian Magazine about the "Slave Trail of Tears", which was the movement by foot of a million slaves from the tobacco plantations to the cotton plantations. Many of our current day roads in the southern US were widened and formalized directly due to this history: 200 people chained to one another and forced to walk together for two-four months required a significant pathway infrastructure. Slave merchants during this time made the equivalent of $450million in today's dollars.
But the specifics of this history are usually covered in history books with a simple sentence like "Due to the tremendous success of inventor Eli Whitney's cotton gin, the demand for slaves in the South rose."
FYI for vocabulary geeks (Amelia Taylor-Hochberg...) a group of humans gathered together to be sold as product was called a "coffle".
It's good that this word has fallen out of use, but remembering that it existed once in common usage is important.
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