Cultures of Time

Published Research

‘Architects of Time: Coloniality, Clocktowers, and Calendars on the East African Coast,’ in Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories, ed., V. Egbers, C. Kamleithner, Ö. Sezer, and A. Skedzuhn-Safir, De Gruyter-Birkhäuser (2024). pp. 53–69.

ABSTRACT: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two forms of temporal materiality associated with British imperialism and colonialism—the printed diary and the clocktower—symbolized British ideas of civilization, industry, discipline, rationality, progress, and modernity, and shaped societal behavior, practices, and outlooks in the imperial metropole and its colonies. Drawing upon archival materials and ethnographic research from colonial coastal East Africa’s port cities of Mombasa and Zanzibar, this article starts a conversation about the printed diaries that circulated in these contexts with the clocktowers that were built there.

Presentations

‘Time and Tide: Temporal Materialities in the Port-City of Mombasa in the Early Modern Period,’ Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference, McGill University (Montreal, Canada), April 13, 2023.

‘Architects of Time: Coloniality, Clocktowers and Calendars on the East African Coast,’ Conference on ‘Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories,’ BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, DFG Research Training Group ‘Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings’ (Virtual), June 17, 2021.