An Anthropologist Asks Tough Questions About Urban Housing

Columbia News, October 11, 2022: An Anthropologist Asks Tough Questions About Urban Housing

“Catherine Fennell teaches in the Anthropology Department and has a joint appointment with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. Her work examines how the social and material legacies of 20th-century urbanism shape the politics of social difference, collective obligation, and utopian imagination in the contemporary U.S. She has a special interest in the future of subsidized housing, and the transformation of urban built environments.

“Her work combines ethnographic and archival research to animate problems that resonate beyond the industrial cities where she has conducted research: How should we understand the ethics of urban life in places characterized by intense forms of social abandonment, economic disinvestment, environmental degradation, and racial and economic segregation?

“Fennell discusses her work with Columbia News, along with how she came to be an urban anthropologist, and advice for anyone contemplating the same path.”

Additional reading:

Last Project Standing: Civics and Sympathy in Post-Welfare Chicago by Catherine Fennell on bookshop.org