Rebecca Choi is an Assistant Professor of architectural history at Tulane University. Her research considers how movements for racial justice have had a pivotal role in the making of urban America.
Charting the racialization of politics, culture, and representation within architectural forms and urban spaces, her book project Black Architectures examines architecture’s relationship to the changing landscape of American race relations between 1940—1970. Paying close attention to how anti-racist protests, boycotts, sit-ins, and insurrections related to civil rights and Black Power movements impacted the field of architecture, she brings underexamined Black architectural producers to the surface of 20th century history. A second project considers Black women who recuperate swamplands as non-binary sites of survival across the Black Atlantic. This work appears in the forthcoming Architecture of the African Diaspora in/of the United States, a collaborative book funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Rebecca holds a PhD in architectural history and theory as well as a Master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California Los Angeles. She has been published in the Avery Review, Ardeth, Harvard Design Magazine, and PlacesJournal.