The seventy-five years following the Civil War saw the founding and nurturing of America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Their diverse institutional frameworks -- including Bible and Normal Schools, Morrill-Act Land Grant institutions, and full-fledged liberal arts colleges and universities – reflected African-Americans’ aspirations for technical training, intellectual and creative excellence, and the professions. With the diversity of these developments came diversity in physical form. Accordingly, HBCU’s built environments reflect uniquely African-American circumstances nestled among their basic American forms.

This CFP solicits new scholarship concerning the planning, architecture, and environmental design of HBCUs founded and developed from 1867 through the 1940’s. Papers on a broad range of topics are welcome. Topics may include studies of individual buildings, of entire campus plans, or of the designers, builders, and patrons who created them. Especially welcome will be presentations concerning HBCUs that have been poorly documented in the literature until now.

This CFP is for just one session of the larger symposium. Please submit abstracts for academic presentations of 20-30 minutes no later than July 20, 2015. Submissions should include your CV in PDF format, along with a single-page PDF including your name, paper title, and paper abstract. Submissions should be via e-mail to jeremy.kargon@morgan.edu.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Abstracts must be under 300 words
2. The title cannot exceed 100 characters, including spaces and punctuation
3. Abstracts must follow the Chicago Manual of Style

Abstracts should define the subject and summarize the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. All abstracts will be held in confidence during the review and selection process, and only the symposium planning team and Session Chair (Dr. Ellen Weiss) will have access to them.

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Morgan's upcoming "The Architecture of HBCUs" symposium will promote discussion of the social context, legacy, and preservation of the built environment at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) around the country. Seen as the first step of a larger academic initiative, the symposium will bring together scholars and professionals to discuss the history of HBCUs' architecture, their campus planning, and the landscape architecture which connected both.

Event Dates: Thursday November 5th and Friday November 6th 2015.
Event Location: School of Architecture and Planning, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA

"The Architecture of HBCUs" website will be up soon. Any other questions about the symposium may also be sent to Jeremy Kargon.