At the end of March, Emily Stratton delivered a virtual talk to undergraduate students in Tulane University’s architecture and urban studies programs. This talk, “Constructing Houses, Identities, Cities” looked at house-building trends in and around Accra, Ghana. Where liquid assets are not assets at all, and social respectability depends upon ability to provide for kin, people quickly materialize spare cash into construction supplies, slowly building houses little by little over decades. The talk thus explored what it means to inhabit liminal spaces—where selves, as much as cities, are in half-built, uneven stages of becoming.
The College of Arts