Charles Davis II, assistant professor of architectural history, was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for his project “Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style, 1860-1945.”
Established in 1956, the Graham Foundation awards project-based grants to individuals and organizations to create public programs to foster the development of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and the role it plays in arts, culture and society.
The foundation's 2015 grants to individuals totaled $490,000 and were awarded to 63 applicants, approximately 10 percent of some 600 applications from around the world. Davis, the only grant recipient in North Carolina, will receive $9,500.
“Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style, 1860-1945” will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2016-17. In it, Davis will demonstrate the seminal role of race theory in the work of Viollet-le-Duc, Gottfried Semper, Louis Sullivan and William Lescaze.
Davis holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.P.S. and Master of Architecture from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is coeditor, with Beth Tauke and Korydon Smith, of “Diversity and Design” (Routledge, 2015).