A mini symposium featuring the work-in-progress of doctoral students in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. Organized by Ayala Levin as part of the seminar “Designing the Rural: Techniques and Imaginaries of Land, Labor, and Production” (UCLA, Spring 2025), with Annie Xuan, Mengyan Wang, Emalee Davidson, and Chunyi Li.

Techniques of Colonization and Commodification in the Making of the Rural

12:30 to 1:50 PM

Kurt Pelzer, “The California Land Act of 1851: Lawmaking and Landmaking”
Carrie Gammel, “The American Resolution: Creating Property through Writing, Drawing, and Building”
Anirudh Gurumoorthy, “From Waste to Work: Tropical Cattle, Cattle Sheds, and Fermenting Manure, 1872–1892”

Response by Samaa Elimam (UCLA)

2:05 to 3:30 PM

Giulia Amoresano, “Looking South, and then farther South: Settling Landless Farmers in Southern Italy, Eritrea and California (1889–1906)”
Hou Chi-Chia, “Settlement Service: Settling Cutover Land in Northern Wisconsin, 1919–1929”
Pritam Dey, “The Dialectic of Experiment and Sabotage in Coastal Bangladesh, 1947–1990”

Response by Ginger Nolan (University of Southern California)