This is a conversation with Assistant Professor Jason E. Nguyen, in which we discuss his evolving work on the architectural history of the early modern Atlantic world. The conversation was recorded on the 8th of January 2021. 

JASON E. NGUYEN is an Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design of the University of Toronto. His research combines architectural history with histories of political economy, science and technology. Nguyen has held fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Southern California and the Getty Research Institute. His writing has appeared in the journals Grey Room, Journal18, Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture and Oxford Art Journal. While Nguyen is presently completing a book titled Theory & Expertise: The Art of Building in Old Regime France, his next project will consider the rapport between early modern architecture, the environment and global capitalism. We were keen to speak to Nguyen because his work combines methods of environmental studies and economic history as well as Indigenous studies in the context of early modern architecture in the Atlantic world. 

Interview Bibliography by Jason E. Nguyen

Barber, Daniel A. Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Dawson, Ashley. Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change. London and New York: Verso Books, 2017.

Koslov, Liz. “The Case for Retreat.” Public Culture 28, no. 2 (79) (2016): 359-387.

Nguyen, Jason E. “Fire, Décor, and Heating Machines.” Oxford Art Journal 40, no. 3 (2017): 371–396.

Nguyen, Jason E. “Handheld Cartography: Herman Moll’s Pocket Globes and Speculative Capital in the 1710s.” Journal18 Issue 10 1720 (Fall 2020), https://www.journal18.org/5331.

Nguyen, Jason E. “Building on Credit: Architecture and the Mississippi Bubble (1716–1720).” Grey Room (2018): 40-67.

Nguyen, Jason E. “La représentation de la technique en France sous l’Ancien régime.” Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture 32 (December 2016): 21-35. 

Summerson, John “The Mind of Wren.” In Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture, 51-86. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1963.

Todd, Zoe. “An Indigenous Feminist's Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is Just Another Word for Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 29, no. 1 (2016): 4-22.