Campus News in Brief
CMU architecture alumnus Scarlett Awarded Highlands Travel Fellowship
Matthew Scarlett (CFA ’08) won the School of Architecture 2014 Delbert C. Highlands Travel Fellowship, worth $12,000, last week.
Scarlett’s fellowship application, titled “Fulfilling the Risorgimento: Modernist Colonial Architecture in Asmara,” explored the relationship between modernist colonial works in Eritrea, located in the Horn of Africa, and “well-known masterpieces of Italian modernism in Rome, Milan, Como and other important Italian cities,” according to a university press release.
Through the fellowship, Scarlett will be traveling to Asmara and other cities in Eritrea.
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Scarlett attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where he received a master’s degree in architecture in May 2013.
He has worked in architecture at various locations, including Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Dublin, and New York. He recently worked as a freelance designer for nARCHITECTS in Brooklyn, where he worked to introduce new models for micro-unit apartments to be installed in Manhattan under the Bloomberg administration.
Scarlett has been a project manager for Audi terminals in the eastern United States; he’s currently managing more than 30 projects. He’s also on a design team that develops plans for numerous international competitions.
The Highlands Travel Fellowship is in honor of Delbert Highlands, a professor of architectural design, design theory, and architectural history at Carnegie Mellon from the 1960s to early 2000s. All alumni of the School of Architecture are able to apply for the fellowship.
Former Carnegie Mellon professor to present “Dark Reflections of Power”
African American history and culture is often seen as being entrenched in themes of oppression and suppression. Associate professor of English and black studies at the University of California Santa Barbara Stephanie L. Batiste, however, argues that African-American artists, musicians, and writers in the time period accepted the segregated and imperialist system in the United States to make themselves feel more included in the culture.
Batiste’s lecture “Dark Reflections of Power: Black Performance Culture and the End of Subversion,” sponsored by Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE), will take place at Carnegie Mellon’s Steinberg Auditorium on Friday, Feb. 21 from 4:30–6:30 p.m.
In a statement from a university press release, Joe Trotter, Giant Eagle professor of history and social justice and director of CAUSE, said in the press release, “CAUSE and the Department of History are especially pleased with Stephanie’s visit and lecture because her talk reinforces the month-long celebration of Black History themes at CMU and the larger Pittsburgh metropolitan region.”
Batiste wants the current perception of African-American identity and culture to be reexamined, as she does not believe the population was oppressed at the time. According to a press release, “She contends that examining complicity with power broadens the concept of black humanity and complicates the understanding of how the oppressed use and manipulate the very tools that have defined their social exclusion.”
CAUSE, in its 19th year at the university, holds events throughout the year. “CAUSE builds upon this legacy through its African-American speakers series, postdoctoral fellowship program and collaborative projects with other institutions like the Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian Institution affiliate,” Trotter said in the press release.