M.C. Overholt

M.C. is completing her doctoral degree in the History and Theory of Architecture at Weitzman School of Design. Using a queer and trans* theoretical lens, M.C.’s dissertation examines exchanges between architecture and sexual science in the 20th century United States. The dissertation argues that, in this period, an ecological conception of sex was forged that positioned the built environment as a primary influencing factor in the production of so-called ‘deviant’ sexual behavior. M.C.’s writing can be found in publications including Public Culture, Platform, and the forthcoming edited collection Living Room (ed. S.E. Eisterer). She is also an editor for Perspecta 57 and has presented her work at venues including the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference, the Urban Humanities Network (un)Conference, and the University of São Paolo FAU.

RECENT ARTICLES

• Overholt, M.C. "'Housing is a Human Right': Moms for Housing's Black Feminist. Politics of Shelter," Public Culture 34, no. 3 (2022): 437-452. 
  https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9937354
• Overholt, M.C. "McKenzie Wark Interview." Paprika!, December 2, 2022. 
• Overholt, M.C. "Lessons from the Crisis Pregnancy Center: Anti-abortion Activism and the Architecture of Coercion." Platform, June 24, 2022.

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS

• "The City of Sexual Deviancy: Race, Rodents, and the Queerness of Single Motherhood,"  Symposium (Homes for Singles as Living Machines), Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), University of São Paolo. Summer 2023. 
• "Lessons from the Participatory Clinic: Architecture and Abortion at the Feminist Women's Health Centers," UC Santa Barbara Art History Graduate Association Annual Academic Symposium, "Inside/Outside: The Threshold in Art and Architectural History." Spring 2023. Paper 
• "Promising Subjects: N. Phyllis Birkby and the Writing of Queer Architectural History," Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Annual International Conference, Montreal. Spring 2023.
• "Queer Architecture?: From the Ephemeral to the Solid,"  Urban Humanities Network (Un)Conference, Tucson, AZ. Spring 2023. 
• Co-organizer of Precarity Conference, Department of Architecture, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Spring 2022.