Events

Join us for the launch of Dr. Vanessa Grossman’s new book, A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France. Concrete Alliance examines the massive reshaping of French cities that took place between 1958 and 1981, an episode commonly regarded as a unique time in which modernist ideals were tested on an unprecedented scale. Yet the history of postwar French modernism has never fully accounted for the influence of one of architecture’s most important institutional patrons, the French Communist Party (PCF). Drawing political theory and architectural history into conversation, Vanessa Grossman probes the shifting but enduring alliance between modern architecture and the PCF in the aftermath of the political crisis of 1958, prompted by the Algerian War of... Read More

Jessica Oublié is a French author, educator, historian, and environmental justice advocate. She has lived in Guadeloupe since 2018, and has published several documentary graphic novels, including Tropiques Toxiques, which was recently translated into English and published by Street Noise. Tropiques Toxiques is an in-depth, unflinching investigation of the Chlordecone scandal, whereby France purchased a pesticide banned in the U.S. and used it in Guadeloupe and Martinique from 1972 to 1993. As a result, the two islands register some of the highest rates for certain cancers today. Oublié also created “Chlordicus,” a board game on Chlordecone offered in 2022 to all middle and high schools in Martinique. She was also the artistic coordinator of “Sargassum: histoire(s) d’... Read More