Tech Talk Tuesdays: Visuals in Education

Sandy Isenstadt

Professor and Chair History of Modern Architecture
Art History
College of Arts & Sciences

Professor Sandy Isenstadt teaches the history of modern architecture, concentrating on developments in Europe and the United States, but including as well courses on the global spread of modernism. His writings span post-World War II reformulations of modernism by émigré architects such as Richard Neutra, Josep Lluis Sert, and Henry Klumb; visual polemics in the urban proposals of Leon Krier and Rem Koolhaas; and histories of refrigerators, picture windows, landscape views, electrification and urban lighting, the history of shopping, consumer design and marketing, real estate appraisal, and the work of various modern and contemporary architects.

His last book, Electric Light: An Architectural History (MIT Press, 2018) is the first sustained examination of the architectural spaces generated by the introduction of electric lighting. Earlier books include: The Modern American House: Spaciousness and Middle-Class Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which won the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians for interdisciplinary studies of urban history, describes the visual enhancement of spaciousness in the architectural, interior, and landscape design of American domestic architecture; Modernism and the Middle East. Politics of the Built Environment, a set of edited essays published in 2008 by the University of Washington Press, is the first book-length treatment of modern architecture in the Middle East. Current projects include two co-edited books that look at the material culture of archives and modeling, a study of the ways in which marble became a modern material, and a history of the visual culture of American civil defense.

His work has been recognized with fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, in Washington, D.C. Before teaching architecture, he practiced architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

John Cox

Associate Professor
Art and Design
College of Arts & Sciences

Director, DE Teacher’s Institute

Jon Cox, Associate Professor of Art and Design, will present his work as a Fulbright Specialist in Slovakia, focusing on his collaborative project with Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers. In his talk, titled ARRIVALS: What’s Left Behind, What Lies Ahead, Cox explores the themes of survival, resilience, and renewal through intimate dialogues and large-format photography, and documentary film. This project offers a platform for individuals displaced by conflict to share their personal stories—detailing their reasons for leaving, the challenges of arrival, and the emotional toll of what was left behind. Through these firsthand accounts, Cox invites audiences to reflect on our shared human experience and encourage a deeper engagement with global issues of displacement and asylum.

Jon Cox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Design, Interim Director of the Delaware Teachers Institute at the University of Delaware, and Director of Arts and Culture / Vice President of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER Foundation). He is a community-engaged collaborative artist who works primarily in photography and film on the local, national, and international levels. Cox’s work has taken him to all seven continents, covering social and environmental issues, where he hopes to make a positive change. He is a Fulbright Specialist, a National Geographic Explorer, and a Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN) Faculty Fellow. He has co-authored two books with Indigenous communities in Tanzania, Hadzabe, By the Light of a Million Fires, and in Peru, Ancestral Lands of the Ese’Eja: The True People, and he is working on a third book with Diaspora in Idaho. His current collaborative projects are supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, Fulbright, and the National Geographic Society.

Barnard McKenna

Associate Professor
English
College of Arts & Sciences

Bernard McKenna is an associate professor in the English Department and serves as the president of the College of Arts and Sciences senate. He has published two books on Negro League baseball. Photographs served as the starting point for his research, and one photo, in particular, marked the turning point in his career away from Irish literature and towards baseball history.

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