Workshop Series
U.S. Urban History and Urban Studies
Nov 9-10, 2026
Workshop Session
Nov 9, 4-6 pm, 02.102 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)
This workshop session will endeavor to place U.S. arguments over urban sprawl within transnational trends in and debates over urban form.
Guest Lecture
Nov 10, 12-2 pm, P 1 (Philosophicum, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18)
The lecture will review the long history of the suburb as the location of the American dream, the place that nurtures and the space that sustains the middle-class, consumer society of American myth and aspiration.
Colloquium Session
Nov 10, 2-4 pm, kl. Bibl. 01-618 (Philosophicum, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18)
The colloquium will connect current U.S. debates over housing affordability and other obstacles to the middle-class aspiration to long-standing arguments over the suburbs and what they are meant to accomplish.
Alan Lessoff is University Professor of History at Illinois State University. An authority on U.S. and comparative urban history, he is the author, co-author, or editor of six books, most recently Where Texas Meets the Sea: Corpus Christi and Its History (Austin, 2015). From 2004 to 2014, he edited the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. His spring 2016 Obama fellowship began an ongoing collaboration with the Obama Institute. More recently, he was a summer guest researcher from 2021 to 2024 with History of Architecture and Urban Planning program at the TU Delft in the Netherlands, engaged with a project on port cities and petroleumscapes.
Contact/Registration
If you are interested in attending any or all of the sessions and would like access to the preparatory reading materials, please contact: Ylva Kreye (kreyeylv@uni-mainz.de)
