Announcing the 2021 Joseph F. Thomas and Ann Kalla Visiting Professors
2021 Joseph F. Thomas Visiting Professor
2021 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor
The School of Architecture is pleased to announce the 2021 Joseph F. Thomas Visiting Professor, Jackie Joseph Paul McFarland, and the 2021 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor, Tommy CheeMou Yang. Professors McFarland and Yang will be joining us from Chicago and New York respectively. This fall, they will be offering seminars aligned with their research and teaching in our first and second year studios. In the spring, they will be offering Options studios.
Jackie Joseph Paul McFarland's research and creative practice focuses on understanding and putting into context the experiences of African Americans' relationships to space and place. It asks the question, "Is it possible to have a Black architecture?" and aspires to a Black Praxis. By applying Black theoretical practices – Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, Necropolitics – he steps outside Eurocentric theory to better understand not only the Black experience, but the experiences of "othered" groups. His work allows space to be created for those who are “othered” by Eurocentric ideology to center themselves as complete human beings who have a voice and perspectives that add to the ability for architecture to create solutions for a diverse world. Jackie received his professional Master of Architecture degree from Portland State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tommy CheeMou Yang's research and creative practice focuses on bridging the disciplines of architecture, cartography, and humanities through storytelling and spatial ethnography. He has focused on how cities adapt and change over time through fieldwork, public history, and multi-scale analysis. This has included embedded research on Hmong refugees re-making their homes in Milwaukee, Thai villagers maintaining their worlds within the rapidly urbanizing city of Chiang Mai, and the morphogenetic growth of immigrant communities in New York. Tommy received his professional Master of Architecture degree from Parsons the New School of Design with Distinction and is a recipient of multiple awards and fellowships.
Please join us in welcoming them to the faculty as we look forward to their teaching and research in the coming academic year.