Recorded April 5, 2004
Below is the original description of the event.
The worst natural disaster in Argentine history, the 1944 San Juan earthquake, was also the spark for a wide range of projects for dramatic transformation.
While the aid campaign for victims launched the career of Colonel Juan Peron, the city in ruins inspired dramatic plans for rebuilding. This talk will trace the intellectual origins, political contours and ultimate trajectory of architectural attempts to use this opportunity to forge a model city for the nation.
Trained as an architect and historian, Mark Healey recently arrived at Berkeley after teaching at New York University and the University of Mississippi. His work centers on the broad transformations of state authority, social life and cultural forms in twentieth-century Latin America, especially Argentina. This talk comes out of his current project, which explores these themes in the unmaking and remaking of the city of San Juan after the 1944 earthquake.