Sheila Crane

When the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria was officially inaugurated in July 1962, following over a century of settler colonialism, the new nation was faced with the extraordinary task of redressing a long history of racialized violence that had culminated in a protracted war, wide-spread destruction, and forced displacement on an extraordinary scale. In the tumultuous period following independence, Algeria was profoundly reimagined by way of small-scale renovation projects and collective acts of solidarity that have long been overshadowed by the monumental building projects initiated in the late 1960s under President Houari Boumediene.

Such ephemeral histories and seemingly small-scale initiatives of collective restitution represent a compelling attempt to forge what Achille Mbembe has recently described as the infrastructures of repair necessary for reimagining how we might more equitably inhabit a planet in dire need of care and reparation.

Crane, is the author of Mediterranean Crossroads: Marseille and Modern Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), winner of the 2013 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Having long been fascinated by urban territories, imaginaries, infrastructures, and histories traversing the western Mediterranean region, she has published widely on colonial infrastructures, histories of planning, ephemeral urbanisms, cities in conflict, the politics of memory and rebuilding in the wake of violence, and queer landscapes. Recent essays have appeared in Architectural Histories, Perspective: actualité en histoire de l’art, City and Society, Space and Culture, and The Journal of Architecture.

Crane has held fellowships at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Clark Art Institute, the Italian Academy for Advanced Study at Columbia University, and Dumbarton Oaks. She is currently completing a book manuscript, tentatively entitled, The City in the Shadow of the Shantytown: Reassembling the Urban from the Bidonville.