On Louis Kahn's Situated Modernism:

"This book will durably change the paradigm by which we have viewed Louis Kahn now for several decades."
-- Francesco Passanti

"This book offers a refreshingly new reading of Louis Kahn...far from being a solitary genius, Kahn was deeply involved in the discourse of his time, searching for an architecture that would foster community within a democratic society."
-- Alan Colquhoun, Princeton University

"This book attempts to re-define Modernism through Kahn, and one cannot help having sympathy and respect for the attitudes expressed in such a unique work."
-- Hiroshi Matsukama, A+U

On Anxious Modernisms:

"This book gracefully and intelligently refutes the perception of 'the several decades of architectural culture that followed the Second World War as an interregnum between an expiring modernism and a dawning postmodernism.'"
-- John Morris Dixon, ARQ

"Goldhagen proposes an interesting framework for analysis that accounts for both the Modern Movement's historical reality and its complexity." --Hilde Heynen, Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement


POSITIONS
On Modern Architecture and Urbanism
Histories and Theories

Editors
Sarah Williams Goldhagen
    The New Republic
Eric Mumford
    Washington University in St. Louis
Cor Wagenaar
    Delft University of Technology

Core Editorial Board
Tim Benton
    Open University, London; Columbia University, NY
Jean-Louis Cohen
    New York University Institute of Fine Arts
Bernard Colenbrander
    University of Eindhoven
Beatriz Colomina
    Princeton University
Jörn Düwel
    University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg
David Frisby
    London School of Economics
Hilde Heynen
    Katholieke Univbersiteit Leuven
Mari Hvattum
    AHO Oslo University
Kathleen James-Chakraborty
    University College, Dublin
Mark Jarzombek
    MIT History, Theory, Criticism
Jorge Francisco Liernur
    University Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires
Carlo Olmo
    Turin Polytechnic University
Antoine Picon
    Harvard University, Ecole des Ponts et Chausses
Katherine Solomonson
    University of Minnesota
Bogdhan Tscherkes
    Lviv; TU Vienna
Iain Boyd Whyte
    Edinburgh University

Positions: On Modern Architecture and Urbanism/ History and Theory is an international, blind-peer-reviewed scholarly journal devoted exclusively to the history, theory, historiography and analysis of modern architecture and urbanism after 1900. A co-publication of the Netherlands Architecture Institute Publications and the University of Minnesota Press, Issue #0 will be available in February 2008, and Issue #1 will appear in late 2008. Beginning with Issue #1, the journal will appear twice a year in the first two years, three times per year in the subsequent two years, and, in the fifth year, will become a quarterly.

Goals
Interest in the modern architecture after 1900, its history and its present, is at an all-time high both among the general public and among scholars in a wide array of disciplines. Yet as a scholarly discipline, the history and theory of modern architecture and urbanism lags behind the work of its own individual practitioners. This is owing to the lack of a single, high-quality venue for new scholarship which facilitates and nurtures the opening up of new questions, research agendas, and debates.

Modern architecture and urbanism since 1900 needs to be, and is already being radically reconceptualized in light of a number of political, social and cultural developments: the ongoing dismantling of polemically-driven analyses and descriptions of modernism (and the development of new ones, polemically-driven and not); the opening up to scholarly research of vast new geographic areas in central and eastern Europe, where modernism was to a large extent born and actively practiced; the growing interest in, and scholarly communication with Asia and Africa; the development within the academy of new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of space, urbanism and built form in disciplines as disparate as studies in colonialism and post colonialism, gender, and film; cultural geography and anthropology; geographic area studies; critical theory; intellectual history and philosophy.

Such recent developments have inspired a great deal of cutting-edge, high-quality scholarship in many different languages, and coming from many regions of the globe, on modern architecture and urbanism-its definitions, its character, and its practices. Positions: On Modern Architecture and Urbanism/ History and Theory is the only journal that gives voice specifically to the discourse on modern architecture and urbanism after 1900 in all its intellectual, geographic, and disciplinary heterogeneity. The editors, committed to a wholly international and rigorously interdisciplinary approach, have structured Positions to promote vigorous discussion among its many diverse participants and contributors, and to set new agendas for research and inquiry.

The journal's title reveals the theoretical inclinations and historical debts of its founding editors, who understand both the practice of theorizing and making buildings and cities, and the practice of scholarship on the history of architecture and urbanism, as the taking of positions in a historically-structured, discursive field that is by definition heterogeneous and plural. Giving voice to the multiplicity of historical and theoretical viewpoints and approaches that constitute our contemporary field, Positions' editors and peer reviewers will encourage contributors to articulate the positions they take in their scholarship in a critically self-aware manner.

Description and Editorial Procedures
One of the editors of Positions will be primarily responsible for each issue, working in constant communication with the other editors. Numbers will alternate between themed and open issues, enabling the editors (or invited guest editors) to identify emerging research agendas and set new ones, and to draw from and promote scholarship in topics that are emerging as, or which the editors believe should be central to this rapidly changing field. Topics and editors of each themed number will be announced well in advance and a "Call for Papers" issued. The editors will also actively solicit contributions from relevant scholars as appropriate-- architectural and urban historians and theorists, as well as from cultural and social historians and theorists, geographers, philosophers, and others-with the understanding that their submission, like all others, will be submitted to a strict, pre-established blind peer review process.

Every issue will include an introductory essay written by the editor (or invited guest editor) in charge. In addition to 4-6 peer-reviewed articles per issue, each number will include a "Discussion Forum" section, written by peer reviewers of the essays contained within, contributors solicited by the editors, and/or letter-writers responding to the contents of previous issues and the authors of relevant articles. The standards for judging submissions will be excellence and originality in historical scholarship, theoretical acumen, critical thought, and clear and engaging rhetorical and visual presentation. Positions aims to be at once readable, provocative, and rigorous.

For submissions inquiries, contact:
Sarah Williams Goldhagen contact form
Cor Wagenaar Wagenaar@bk.tudelft.nl
Eric Mumford epm@wustl.edu

For subscription inquries, contact:
University of Minnesota Press Journals ump@umn.edu
Netherlands Architecture Institute Publications info@naipublishers.nl