Jelena Bogdanovic

Particularly interested in research agendas that go beyond social evolutionism, my understanding of architecture was never devoid of its urban frame. At the University of Belgrade, Serbia, I worked with Miodrag Ralevic and Milos Perovic, the later a student of Doxiadis and eco-geographical ekistics. My work on urban design and various urban policies and methodologies as a practitioner back in native Serbia, here in the U.S. has continued to engage with the questions of the urban examined from historical and theoretical perspectives. The co-edited book (with Jessica Christie and Eulogio Guzman) on Political Landscapes of Capital Cities (University Press of Colorado, 2016), investigates the processes of transformation of the natural landscape into culturally constructed and ideologically defined political environments of capital cities.  In this spatially inclusive, socially dynamic interpretation, we use methodological tools of architectural and urban design combined and juxtaposed with those of archeology, human geography, and anthropology.  Case studies include Cusco, Rome-Constantinople, Bangkok, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Matera, and Tehran, and highlight many complex political and ideological agendas of a diverse set of sovereign entities that planned, constructed, displayed and performed their societal needs in the spaces of their capitals, ultimately confirming that political authority is profoundly spatial.  As a medievalist I am also entertaining an idea to examine the urban and urbanity outside of the city and within alternative architectural and urban concepts, such as within medieval monasteries with high urbanity.