About

This call for papers invites researchers to examine the history of mass-media architectures and infrastructures in the colonial and postcolonial worlds of the twentieth century.

It focuses on the buildings, networks and material landscapes connected to telecommunications, radio, television and broadcasting media: radio and television houses, studios, transmitting stations, towers, antennas, cables, projection infrastructures and other technical devices. These constructions are not considered only as functional supports, but as architectural and political forms involved in the production of modernity, authority, territorial control and sovereignty.

The call seeks to explore these infrastructures in colonised and decolonised territories between 1900 and 1980, with particular attention to Africa. It welcomes proposals addressing the relationships between infrastructure and power, design and expertise, networks of exchange, technical and cultural circulation, and the contemporary legacies of these buildings.

Papers may focus on specific case studies, transnational trajectories, architectural or media archives, development policies, or the afterlives of these infrastructures through heritage recognition, conversion, abandonment or demolition.