Architect and architectural historian Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, deploys a teaching methodology that engages with the university's surrounding communities. Using the historic architecture of New Bedford, Mass. as a springboard, Karimi considers issues vital for the sustainable renewal of the built environment in the context of the American Post-industrial city. A key contribution in this vein is the Black Spaces Matter traveling exhibition that she organized in collaboration with local experts, students, and residents in order to showcase the extraordinary history of New Bedford in the abolitionist movement. This talk presents some of these activities.

Pamela Karimi is an architect and an architectural historian. Her work spans two fields of inquiry. The first is architecture and visual culture of the modern Middle East. The second is design and sustainability in North America. She is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era and co-editor of Images of the Child and Childhood in Modern Muslim Contexts, Reinventing the American Post-Industrial City & The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East: From Napoleon to ISIS. Her major curatorial projects include Urban Renewal and Creative Economy in Massachusetts Gateway Cities at the New Bedford Art Museum, Black Spaces Matter at the BAC’s McCormick Gallery and Stateless: Artists Respond to the Refugee Crisis in the University Art Gallery at UMass Dartmouth. In 2018 she received the Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Karimi is the co-founder of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative.