Past
Reconstructing the James Clemens, Jr. House [video]
National Building Arts Center; St. Louis, Missouri / November 13, 2024
What the Residents Want: Expert and Non-Expert Values at Parkchester
Society for American City and Regional Planning History; San Diego, California / October 25, 2024
A New Museum of the Built Environment for Our Age: The National Building Arts Center [video]
Society of Architectural Historians-St. Louis Chapter/Steadman Library Lecture Series; St. Louis, Missouri October 22, 2024 [VIRTUAL]
The Best of the Rust Belt Book Launch
Leviathan Bookstore; St. Louis, Missouri / July 16, 2024
Archive and Artifact: The National Building Arts Center
International Convening on Architectural Materials and Fragment Collections in Preservation Education; Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; New York, New York / June 27, 2024
When Demolition Is Actually Preservation (with Kyle Lansing and Ben Mohrmann)
National Building Arts Center; St. Louis, Missouri / May 29, 2024
Erascape City: Landscape as Political Condition in St. Louis
Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Conference; St. Louis, Missouri / March 23, 2024
In Conversation: Michael Allen and Robert Green
Pulitzer Arts Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / January 24, 2024
Urban Archaeology (with Stephanie Weissberg)
High Noon, Kranzberg Arts Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / November 30, 2023
Public Works and Social Justice
American Public Works Association-Missouri Chapter Conference; Columbia, Missouri / November 2, 2023
Urban Archaeology
World Heritage Management Program, University of Birmingham; Birmingham, UK / October 9, 2023
Community Tour: Urban Archaeology and Brickline Greenway
Pulitzer Arts Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / September 24, 2023
National Building Arts Center (with Emery Cox)
Unseen St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / September 21, 2023
Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis Exhibition Tour (with Stephanie Weissberg)
Pulitzer Arts Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / September 9, 2023
Brick City (with Mitch Goist and Emma Klues)
Missouri History Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / July 13, 2023
Statues and Liberties: What Stories Monuments Tell Us (with Geoff Ward and Stephanie Weissberg)
National Building Arts Center; St. Louis, Missouri / July 12, 2023
What Does a Brick Mean?; part of Free Soil Party created by Jackie Sumell
Counterpublic; St. Louis, Missouri / June 16, 2023
Yamasaki’s Interiors at Pruitt-Igoe: Representations and Misrepresentations
Moonscape of the Mind: Japanese-American Design After Internment; St. Louis, Missouri / April 15, 2023
The Right to Housing (Discussant)
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 111th Annual Meeting; St. Louis, Missouri / March 31, 2023
You Are Here; Opening Plenary with Sharon Egret Sutton, FAIA
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 111th Annual Meeting; St. Louis, Missouri / March 30, 2023
Housing Blocs: Comparing Modernist Mass Housing Architectures Across the US and Yugoslavia
Center for Architecture, Urbanism and Global Heritage, Nottingham Trent University; Nottingham, England UK / January 17, 2023
Implicit Bias, Resident Struggle: The Production of Expertise and the Preservation of Public Housing
Association for Critical Heritage Studies; Santiago, Chile / December 9, 2022
Color Preferences, Class Preferences: The Case of Lafayette Square in St. Louis
Society of American City and Regional Planning History; New York, New York / October 21, 2022
Housing Blocs: Comparing Modernist Mass Housing Architectures Across the US and Yugoslavia [video]
Society of Architectural Historians – St. Louis Chapter/Steadman Library; St. Louis, Missouri / September 27, 2022
Gateway Mall Tour
What’s Out There Weekend; The Cultural Landscape Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / September 24, 2022
St. Louis Architecture: Past, Present and Future
Missouri History Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / August 20, 2022
Architectural Terra Cotta in St. Louis: A History Across Five Blocks of One Street
National Building Arts Center; Sauget, Illinois / June 14, 2022
“Soviet” Architecture in the “Free World” Ideological Narratives Against Public Housing in the US
Housing Blocs; Chicago, Illinois / May 21, 2022
Archive and Artifact: Building a New Institution
Walter Burley Griffin Society 23rd Annual Conference; Elmhurst, Illinois / May 7, 2022
Book Celebration: The Material World of Modern Segregation
Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / April 6, 2022
Architectural Terra Cotta in St. Louis: A History Across Five Blocks of One Street
St. Louis Art Museum Friends of American Art and Design; Virtual / November 9, 2021
The Shadow of the High-Rise: Postwar Debates Over the Form of US Public Housing [video]
Mass Housing Across the Soft Iron Curtain: Connecting the US and Yugoslavia; Belgrade, Serbia / October 4, 2021
Who Moved My Memories? (with Dana Levy, Cheeraz Gormon and Gwen Moore) [video]
St. Louis Art Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / July 29, 2021
Housing Blocs: Preserving Ordinary Modernism Across the Atlantic (with Cheryl Johnson, Vladana Putnik Prica and Jelica Jovanović) [video]
Dismantling Preservation Unconference; Virtual / July 27, 2021
Mass Housing in the United States: A Legacy Worth Reclaiming
Environmental Design Research Association 52; Detroit, Michigan / May 21, 2021
The Divided City // Pedagogical Explorations of Spatial Injustice in and with St. Louis (with Linda Samuels, De Nichols, Patty Heyda and Catalina Freixas)
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 109th Annual Meeting; St. Louis, Missouri / March 26, 2021
Virtual Tour: Crossing the Delmar Divide
Architecture School Librarians Association Conference; St. Louis, Missouri / March 25, 2021
Pruitt-Igoe (part of the St. Louis Architecture and Urbanism virtual tour)
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 109th Annual Meeting; St. Louis, Missouri / March 24, 2021
Environmental Racism and the Arts (panel with Jordan Weber, Inez Bordeaux & Geoff Ward) [video]
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri / March 9, 2021
Early Historic Preservation in St. Louis
Daughters of the American Revolution, St. Louis Chapter; St. Louis, Missouri / January 23, 2021 [VIRTUAL]
Modernism in American Architecture: Concepts, Principles and Pathways
Alton Area Landmarks Association; Alton, Illinois / December 5, 2020 [VIRTUAL]
Living Together: Histories of Making and Remaking US Neighborhoods
Master of Architecture Program, University of Calgary; Calgary, Canada / November 4, 2020 [VIRTUAL]
Modernism, Mass Housing and Heritage
Ironbridge Institute of Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham; Birmingham, England UK / October 28, 2020 [VIRTUAL]
Historic Landscape Preservation [video]
Wildwood Historic Preservation Commission; Wildwood, Missouri USA / September 24, 2020
Housing Tower Blocks in the United States: Locating Ideological Narratives of a Vanishing Heritage; part of the panel The Soft Iron Curtain: Reappraising East/West Heritage Dichotomies, organized with Vladana Putnik Prica
5th Biennial Conference of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies; London England / August 26-20, 2020 [VIRTUAL]
Reclaiming the Built Environment for the People: The Urban Renewal Activities of Jeff-Vander-Lou in St. Louis
Vernacular Architecture Forum Conference; San Antonio, Texas / May 9, 2020 [VIRTUAL]
American Architectural Styles
Alton Area Landmarks Association; Alton, Illinois / March 28, 2020 [POSTPONED]
Keynote Panel
National Walking Summit; St. Louis, Missouri / March 10, 2020
The Emerging Ungovernable City: Consolidation and Compression in St. Louis, 1962-75
18th National Society for American City and Regional Planning History Conference; Arlington, Virginia / November 2, 2019
Water and Stupid Men: A Walking Tour of Seventh Street
Part of Real Estate Row, an installation by Jennifer Colten / The Luminary; St. Louis, Missouri / October 26, 2019
Public Interview of Heidi Aronson Kolk for Taking Possession: The Politics of Memory in a St. Louis Town House
Left Bank Books; St. Louis, Missouri / October 22, 2019
Goodbye Columbus?: The Future of Monuments in an Age of Inclusion
Ritz Park; St. Louis, Missouri / October 5, 2019
The Gateway Arch Reconsidered
St. Louis Chapter of the American Planning Association; St. Louis, Missouri / August 21, 2019
Historic Preservation and Uneven Development
Vernacular Architecture Forum Biennial Conference; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA / June 1, 2019
Metonyms for Changing Cities: Shrinking American Cities Confront Vacant Houses
The Thrill of the Dark: Heritages of Fear, Fascination and Fantasy; University of Birmingham; Birmingham, England / April 25, 2019
Segregation By Design: Conversations and Calls for Action in St. Louis (with Michael Willis, Denise Ward-Brown and Sudarsan Kant)
Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts; Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / April 11, 2019
How Not What: Power, Time and Landscape
Art + Landscape STL / Granite City Art and Design District; Granite City, Illinois / April 6, 2019
How Not What: Power, Time and Landscape [video]
The Mississippi: An Anthropocene River Field School / Granite City Art and Design District; Granite City, Illinois / March 10, 2019
Exaggerated Rumors of the Death of Modernism: The Legacy of Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis
Cities at the Crossroads; Urban History Association; Columbia, S.C., USA / October 18-21, 2018
The Vernacular as Repossession Project: JeffVanderLou in St. Louis, 1966-1974
The Politics of Tradition; International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments Conference; Coimbra, Portugal / October 4-7, 2018
The ABCs of STL: 26 Urban Conditions
Ritz Park; St. Louis, Missouri / August 24, 2018
Opening Plenary: The Challenge of Middle Neighborhoods in Legacy Cities (with Alan Mallach, Jean Follett and Nicholas Hamilton)
reGENerated: Legacy Cities 2018; Buffalo, New York / July 13, 2018
Vacant Land as Infrastructural System in the Depleted City: Landbanking, Stormwater and Participation in St. Louis
The Fragile City: Creation, Expansion, Collapse and Resilience; Università Ca’ Foscari; Venice, Italy / June 11-13, 2018
The Spatial Production of the Middle Class in North St. Louis, 1900-1930
The Primary Source: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Memory and Identity; St. Louis, Missouri / May 18, 2018
Citizen Space (with Heather Woofter)
Summer City Seminar; Divided City Initiative, Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / May 10, 2018
Tower Grove Park and Emerging City Systems in the 19th Century City
Friends of Tower Grove Park Lecture Series; St. Louis, Missouri / May 6, 2018
Greetings From Our Future City
Dwell in Other Futures; St. Louis, Missouri / April 28, 2018
A Few Stones Left Upon One Another
Society of Architectural Historians, St. Louis Chapter; Central Library; St. Louis, Missouri / April 24, 2018
Historic Preservation’s Long Arc: And Where It May Bend
Historic Preservation Association Annual Banquet, Southeast Missouri State University; Cape Girardeau, Missouri / April 21, 2018
Finding Our Way to the Future: Historic Preservation In the Active Tense
St. Louis Regional Library Network; St. Louis, Missouri / April 18, 2018
Historic Preservation’s Long Arc (Or, Where Are We Going?)
Alton Area Landmarks Association; Alton, Illinois / March 31, 2018
Who Design Fails (panel with Catalina Freixas and Mark Abbott)
Design for America; Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / March 22, 2018
The Red Lines Around Fairground Park: Segregation Territories in St. Louis
Missouri Conference on History; Jefferson City, Missouri / March 16, 2018
Predictive Speculation: Researching the Spatial Future
Critical Practice in an Age of Complexity; University of Arizona, Tucson / February 23, 2018
Democracy Is Overrated (Performance)
Granite City Arts & Design District; Granite City, Illinois / January 27, 2018
The East St. Louis Massacre and the Larger Jim Crow Geography of St. Louis
Conference on Illinois History; Springfield, Illinois / October 5, 2017
The Entropic City: St. Louis, 1967-2067
At the Edge of Everything Else; St. Louis, Missouri / October 4, 2017
Centennial: Remembering the East St. Louis Massacre (Panel)
Americanist Dinner Forum; St. Louis, Missouri / September 28, 2017
The Radical Past: The Landscape Begs Us to Act
United We Stand Conference; St. Louis, Missouri / September 9, 2017
The Origin and Evolution of St. Louis’ Urban Form
Ritz Park; St. Louis, Missouri / August 24, 2017
Re: In The Shadow of the Arch [a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTUnr_svxd0″>video]
Contemporary Art Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / July 8, 2017
Shaping the Future: Notes from Historic Preservation in St. Louis
Walter Burley Griffin Society 18th Annual Conference; Edwardsville, Illinois / June 17, 2017
The Project Domesticated: Postmodern Retrofits for Public Housing (written and presented with Susanne Cowan)
Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference; Glasgow, Scotland / June 7-10, 2017
The East St. Louis Massacre and the Larger Jim Crow Geography of St. Louis
East St. Louis Centennial Commission Conference; East St. Louis, Illinois / May 27, 2017
Higher Ground: Honoring the Spirit of Washington Park Cemetery (panel)
Missouri History Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / May 24, 2017
Fairground Park and the Geographic Means of Segregation in Twentieth Century St. Louis
Material World of Modern Segregation Symposium, Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, MO / April 21, 2017
Historical Memory – Panel Respondent
Graduate History Association Conference, Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / April 1, 2017
Keynote Lecture: State of St. Louis
Political Round Table; St. Louis University / November 21, 2016
Preservation 50: Striking Gold (with Brad White, Melissa Jest, Bob Stanton, Ron Anzalone and Milford Wayne Donaldson)
PastForward: National Preservation Conference; Houston, Texas / November 15-18, 2016
Careers in Public History
Expanding Western Horizons: 56th Annual Western History Association Conference; St. Paul, Minnesota / October 20-23, 2016
Deconstructing and Reconstructing St. Louis
Pulitzer Arts Foundation; St. Louis, Missouri / September 29, 2016
Historic Preservation and Industrial Heritage in the American Bottom
45th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial Archeology; Kansas City, Missouri / June 2-5, 2016
What Has Historic Preservation Done for You Lately? (with Emilie Evans and Eli Pousson)
National Council on Public History Annual Meeting; Baltimore, Maryland / March 16-19, 2016
Facing Memory in the Wellston Loop
Wellston Loop Family Reunion, St. Louis, Missouri / November 21, 2015
Baldwin Hills Village: Race, Community Associations and the Ethics of Preservation
16th National Conference on Planning History; Los Angeles, California / November 5-8, 2015
Vacant to Vibrant (with Jason Deem)
Missouri Preservation Conference; Cape Girardeau, Missouri / October 21-23, 2015
Recultivating the City: Urban Agriculture and St. Louis Today
Urban Land Institute; St. Louis, Missouri / October 14, 2015
Preservation and Revitalization
Des Moines Rehabbers Club; Des Moines, Iowa / August 28, 2015
There’s Nothing Pure About Preservation
Iowa Downtown Summit; Des Moines, Iowa / August 28, 2015
The Vacant As Vernacular
Vernacular Architecture Forum; Chicago, Illinois / June 3-7, 2015
The Architectural Heritage of St. Louis Lost (And Found)
Missouri History Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / May 21, 2015
Is the National Register of Historic Places Helping or Hindering Legacy City Preservation?
Landmarks Illinois Preservation Snapshot Lecture Series; Chicago, Illinois / May 11, 2015
Delineating Modernity: Reflections on 20th Century American Buildings and their Architects
Sheldon Art Galleries; St. Louis, Missouri / November 2014
The Politics of Public Memory and Site Definition at Pruitt-Igoe (with Heidi Kolk)
Artifacts As Evidence: The Material Record of Politics; Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis / October 2014
Regeneration or Repetition of Urban Renewal?: Land Assemblage, Historic Preservation and Community in North St. Louis
Urban History Association; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania / October 2014
Beyond Saving Buildings: Historic Preservation in the Age of the “Selfie”
St. Louis Design Week; St. Louis, Missouri / September 26, 2014
Seeking the Landscape of Civic Identity: The Gateway Mall and Serra’s Twain
St. Louis Art Museum; St. Louis, Missouri / June 19-20, 2014
Thinking Outside of the Box: New Directions for Historic Preservation
Preservation Partners of Fox Valley; St. Charles, Illinois / June 2014
Perpetual Disruption? Losing DeSoto-Carr and Pruitt-Igoe
Lost Neighborhoods Series, Landmarks Association of St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / April 25, 2013
Pruitt-Igoe Discussion (with Sylvester Brown, Jr. and Juan William Chavez)
Laumeier Sculpture Park; St. Louis, Missouri / January 12, 2013
The Promises of Pruitt-Igoe
Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / November 18, 2012
Pruitt Igoe Now
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, New York University; New York, New York / October 12, 2012
A Preservation Ellipsis: The AAA Building and Our Recent Architectural History
FORM Contemporary Design Show; St. Louis, Missouri / September 29, 2012
The Past, Present and Future of the Clemens House
Landmarks Association of St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / May 10, 2012
Pruitt Igoe Now
Rust Belt to Artist Belt; St. Louis, Missouri / April 13, 2012
After Pruitt Igoe: Narratives of an Urban Forest as a Cultural Resource (with Nora Wendl)
Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians-Landscape Chapter; Detroit, Michigan / April 2012
Public Housing in St. Louis: Vanishing Mid-Century Modern Architecture (with Lynn Josse)
St. Louis Artists Guild; St. Louis, Missouri / June 23, 2011
The Pleasure of the Landscape: Placemaking and Identity in the St. Louis Place Neighborhood
Fontbonne University; St. Louis, Missouri / April 28, 2011
Embodied Histories, Fragmented Landscapes: Making Sense of the Post-Urban Renewal St. Louis Built Environment
Space and Place: Interdisciplinary Approaches / St. Louis University; St. Louis, Missouri / April 11, 2011
Panel: Regeneration (with Stephen Acree, Antonio D. French and Paul J. McKee, Jr.) [video]
Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / March 19, 2011
Making Parks in the Central City: The Evolution of the Gateway Mall
Collective Memory in St. Louis Symposium, Fontbonne University; St. Louis, Missouri / October 2010
Modernism and the Rise of the Early St. Louis Preservation Movement
Mid-Century Modern Masters Series, Landmarks Association of St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri / September 12, 2010