This year, faculty from across Pratt Institute explored compelling ideas and expanded creative boundaries through a wide-ranging collection of published works. More than 30 titles offer everything from ethical frameworks for AI and critiques of urban design to experimental photography and noir fiction. Together, these publications demonstrate a shared commitment to independent, critical, and transformative thought.
Explore Pratt Faculty Books of 2025 by theme:
- Architecture and Urbanism
- Data, Ethics, and Technology
- Environment and Climate
- Photography and Visual Art
- Poetry, Fiction, and Myth
- Social Justice and Historical Change
Do you have a suggestion of a recently published book by a Pratt faculty member that we should consider adding to this year’s list? Email Prattfolio at prattfolio@pratt.edu.
Architecture and Urbanism
Human Rights and the Architecture of Conflict (Routledge)
Tim Cunningham, Adjunct Associate Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies
This book investigates how architecture and urban planning were used to systematically segregate and divide cities with significant adverse consequences for minority communities. Tim Cunningham presents research from a number of cities including Belfast, New York, and Miami, drawing from interviews and archival documents to show the link between the built environment and social inequality. The book concludes by proposing ways architects and planners can work to address these historical practices and foster more inclusive urban spaces through restorative development. Available from Routledge.
J.UCY10 (University of Cyprus)
Theoharis David, Professor, Undergraduate Architecture, BArch ’61, contributor
Students in the architecture department of the University of Cyprus compile their research and creative work in the bilingual annual publication J.UCY Magazine (the University of Cyprus Student Projects Journal). In his introduction to the 10th edition of this publication, Theoharis David—one of the department’s founders—writes that the projects contribute to “a socially inclusive, environmentally responsible, and humane future development of Cyprus.” Learn more at University of Cyprus.
Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories (Routledge)
Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design 1945–1985 (Bloomsbury)
Sarah A. Lichtman, Chair of the Department of History of Art and Design
Sarah A. Lichtman coedited two books exploring the intersection of design and global politics.
Coedited with Jilly Traganou, Design, Displacement, Migration analyzes the role of architecture and design in the context of human migration and displacement caused by forces like conflict, disasters, and colonialism. Topics include urban renewal programs, passports and border control, and refugee camps. Available from Routledge.
Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries demonstrates how art, architecture, and design exhibitions after World War II served as tools for international influence and cross-cultural communication. Coedited with Verity Clarkson and Harriet Atkinson, the collection of case studies examines events such as Israel’s first exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. Originally published in 2022, it is newly available in paperback from Bloomsbury.
Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Erica Morawski, Associate Professor, History of Art and Design
In Development Design, Erica Morawski examines the design of tourism as a manifestation of political and economic forces with roots in the plantation economy. Analyzing five hotels in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba as case studies, Morawski argues that they were bound to larger development practices shaped by local politics and international relations. Part of the Pitt Latin American Series from University of Pittsburgh Press.
DISTIGMO: Trial & Error (Distigmo)
Laura Salazar-Altobelli, Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Architecture, contributor with salazarsequeromedina
The inaugural issue of the magazine DISTIGMO offers a view of architecture that emphasizes collaboration, experimentation, and uncertainty. The publication frames architecture as an open-ended endeavor—an unfolding negotiation between iterative design, site constraints, material assemblies, and labor. Laura Salazar-Altobelli and Pablo Sequero contributed the article “The Outdoor Room,” underscoring the issue’s theme of trial and error as a generative facet of the architectural process. Available from Distigmo.
8 Minutes, 20 Seconds: Housing After Banking, Encrypting the Sun (Actar Publishers)
Eunjeong Seong, Adjunct Associate Professor, CCE, Undergraduate Architecture, coauthor with Michael Bell
The book envisions a near-future economy and landscape for housing shaped by the converging forces of the climate crisis and artificial intelligence—conditions that threaten to erase the forms of labor that once sustained access to housing, and, more broadly, patterns of human settlement. In this imagined world, inexhaustible solar energy becomes universal basic income for habitation, distributed through advances in manufactured housing. Eunjeong Seong and Michael Bell propose a future in which the house itself is reimagined as an active instrument—one that captures and redistributes the sun’s power as the foundation of a new social and spatial order. Available from Actar Publishers.
Data, Ethics, and Technology
Digital Editing And Publishing In The Twenty-First Century (Scottish Universities Press)
Filipa Calado, Assistant Professor, School of Information, contributor
Filipa Calado’s essay “Re-Encoding Dominance: Queer Approaches to TEI Markup” in Digital Editing And Publishing In The Twenty-First Century explores what Queer Studies might lend to electronic editorial practices. It proposes a methodology for electronic editing that resists rigid structures of data formats in order to emphasize gaps in the historical record. Available from Scottish Universities Press.
Universal Methods of Ethical Design: 100 Ways to Become More Ethically Aware, Responsible, and Active in Your Design Work (Quarto)
Sai Shruthi Chivukula, Assistant Professor, School of Information, coauthor with Colin Gray
Universal Methods of Ethical Design offers a comprehensive survey of ethically centered design practices for designers, technologists, and organizations. The book introduces practical methods, frameworks, and principles that support ethical awareness and action throughout every phase of the design process. Topics ranging from feminist design and activism to privacy and security are presented in an accessible two-page format that pairs explanations with visual examples. Available from Quarto.
Environment and Climate
After Spaceship Earth: Art, Techno-utopia, and Other Science Fictions (Yale University Press)
Eva Díaz, Professor, History of Art and Design
The influential architect R. Buckminster Fuller famously compared Earth to a giant machine controlled by humans in his 1969 essay “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” The metaphor highlights that global cooperation and innovation are essential for humanity’s survival, but is also troubling in how it makes the planet a human-authored technological object. In After Spaceship Earth, Eva Díaz explores how contemporary artists are challenging Fuller’s belief in a perfect future powered by technology. Available from Yale University Press.
Aquapelagos: Integrated Terrestrial and Marine Assemblages (Routledge)
May Joseph, Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, coeditor with Philip Hayward
This collection of essays explores the concept of the “aquapelago,” a framework that considers islands and their adjacent waters as a single, integrated ecosystem. Aquapelagos, coedited by May Joseph, analyzes the effects of climate change and ocean toxicity on island environments across the globe, with case studies ranging from Chile’s Juan Fernandez Islands to Indonesia. Available from Routledge.
Blue-Green Rehabilitation: Tourism and Leisure in River Cities (CABI)
Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History (University of Nebraska Press)
Carl Zimring, Director, Center for Critical Discard Research and Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, contributor
Carl Zimring has contributed chapters to two new books on environmental history and justice.
In Blue-Green Rehabilitation: Tourism and Leisure in River Cities, Zimring analyzes the cleanup and redevelopment of two Superfund sites in Brooklyn: Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal. His chapter, “Arts and Recreation as Environmental Activism: Reimagining Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal in the 21st Century,” considers the transformation of these formerly polluted industrial waterways into public spaces. Available from CABI.
Zimring also contributed the chapter “Dirty Work Reconsidered: On the Historical Dynamics of Labor, Waste, and Race in Industrial Society” to Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History. The volume argues for an expanded definition of environmental history, traditionally understood as the study of the relationship between people and the natural world, to also account for how environmental issues create social conflicts and power imbalances. Available from University of Nebraska Press.
Photography and Visual Art
SUBSOUND (Apogee Graphics)
Shannon Ebner, Chairperson of Photography
Released as part of her solo exhibition THE SEAWEED SYNTHESIZER at kaufmann repetto gallery in New York in early 2025, this slim volume is, as Shannon Ebner refers to it, a “call-and-response public communication.” The book presents 18 images from Ebner’s WET LETTERS photographic alphabet. Available from Apogee Graphics.
David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York (SKIRA)
Dieter Hall: A Naked Chair (Edition Patrick Frey)
Allen Frame, Adjunct Professor, Photography, contributor
Allen Frame lends his perspective to two new art monographs focused on two New York-based artists whose practices were shaped by the AIDS crisis.
For David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York, Frame was interviewed about coproducing performances, with Kirsten Bates, of several of Wojnarowicz’s monologues in New York, Berlin, and Brooklyn. The focus of the books is a series of photos that Wojnarowicz created in the late 1970s, posing a male figure wearing a mask of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, an icon of youthful rebellion. Available from Artbook.
Frame also contributed an essay to the monograph Dieter Hall: A Naked Chair. Hall, born in Zurich in 1955, is a Zurich-based painter who lived in New York from 1985 to 2010, and whose portraits of seated men and still lifes evoke the tension between isolation and intimacy. Available from Edition Patrick Frey.
The Great Room (Loose Joints)
Katherine Hubbard, Associate Professor and MFA Program Faculty Director, Photography
Following the onset of her mother’s dementia in 2020, Katherine Hubbard began collaborating with her mother on a series of photographs. In a large home cluttered with architectural salvage, they created photos of their tender daily rituals like bathing and watching television. Interspersed among these photos is a series of experimental body-contact prints that evoke the physicality of aging. The Great Room was shortlisted for Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025 Author Book Award. Available from Loose Joints.
The Last Things (TBW Books)
John Lehr, Associate Professor, Photography
In the photobook The Last Things, John Lehr examines ordinary objects from American daily life and commerce. Items such as a “help wanted” sign and a broken LED screen are presented as though they were archaeological artifacts, inviting viewers to consider the meaning of common materials in contemporary culture. Available from TBW Books.
Poetry, Fiction, and Myth
Woebegone and Other Poems (Theophora)
Claire Donato, Assistant Chairperson; Adjunct Associate Professor, Writing
Claire Donato’s cat Woebegone serves as a muse for reflections on topics such as love, death, and the creative process in the poetry collection Woebegone and Other Poems. The book is accompanied by the text-based puzzle game Woebegone’s Song, cowritten by Donato, Nik Slackman, and Anastasios Karnazes, and designed by Karnazes. Available from Theophora.
Behind Sunset (Mysterious Press)
David Gordon, Adjunct Professor, Writing
The shattered dreams of a one-time Hollywood hopeful provide a point of departure for David Gordon’s comedic noir Behind Sunset. Set in the 1990s, the novel follows the down-at-the-heels writer Elliott Gross as he tumbles down a rabbit hole from the seedy adult entertainment industry to the sinister world of celebrity-backed New Age wellness. Available from Mysterious Press.
The Undertaking of the Pearl (Cutt Press)
Writings on Translation (Seagull Books)
Christian Hawkey, Professor, Writing
Christian Hawkey’s poetry chapbook takes its title from lines in a 1996 poem by the late writer June Jordan: “YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT / TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING / OF THE PEARL.” Hawkey’s book offers an extended reading of Jordan’s phrase in poems exploring themes of commitment and the ethical imperative to value human life. Learn more at Cutt Press.
Hawkey also cotranslated, with Marouane Zakhir, Writings on Translation by Moroccan philosopher Abdessalam Benabdelali, which examines the history of the status of translation in contemporary Arabic thought and language. The book is introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Available from The University of Chicago Press.
Duvall, Shelley (Newest York)
Laura Henriksen, Adjunct Associate Professor, Writing
Titled for both Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Shelley Duvall, late actress known for her portrayals of Wendy Torrance in The Shining and Olive Oyl in Popeye, Laura Henriksen’s poetry collection Duvall, Shelley explores themes of haunting and survival in contemporary life. It follows her debut full-length poetry collection Laura’s Desires (Nightboat, 2024), which also engaged with pop culture figures, including pop icon Selena and the enigmatic Twin Peaks character Laura Palmer. Available from Newest York.
Sidesplitters (Three Count Pour)
Benjamin Krusling, Visiting Assistant Professor, Writing
In the poetry chapbook sidesplitters, Benjamin Krusling writes of “the immense pressure of will and circumstance / in which its been possible , relax , to try to live.” The work is part of “Or Set,” a collaborative series that also features chapbooks from Kat Addis, Jane Gregory, Ian Heames, and Kai Ihns. Available from Asterism.
A Periodic Table of Greek Mythology (Working Classicists)
Kate Minniti, Visiting Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design, contributor
This volume organizes over 100 characters from Greek mythology into a structure resembling a scientific model to illustrate their complex relationships. Kate Minniti contributed the entry on Creon, the ruler of Thebes who is a central character in Sophocles’s plays Oedipus Rex and Antigone. Available from Working Classicists.
Autobiographie des Todes (“Autobiography of Death”) (S. Fischer Verlag)
Cotranslated into German by Uljana Wolf, Visiting Professor, Writing, and Sool Park, from the original Korean text by Kim Hyesoon
Uljana Wolf cotranslated this poetry collection by Korean author Kim Hyesoon. The book contains 49 poems, taking its form from the 49 days a spirit is said to roam the earth in some Buddhist traditions. Each poem gives voice to a host of unstable speakers, reflecting on unjust and violent experiences, revisiting the world through the kaleidoscope of multipersonal perceptions. The German translation was awarded the International Prize for Literatures in translation by HKW, which “honours an outstanding work of contemporary international literature and its first translation into German.” The English translation by the renowned poet Don Mee Choi—a frequent guest lecturer at Pratt—was awarded the International Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019. Available from S. Fischer Verlag.
Social Justice and Historical Change
The Legacy of Black Women in Librarianship: When They Dared to Be Powerful (ALA Neal-Schuman)
Anthony Cocciolo, Dean of the School of Information, contributor
The Legacy of Black Women in Librarianship: When They Dared to Be Powerful profiles 16 Black women who became leaders in the library field while overcoming significant obstacles. Anthony Cocciolo contributed the chapter “Alice Roberts and the Breakdown of Segregation in Northern Library Schools, 1890-1940,” which details the story of the first Black student at the Pratt Institute Library School and the history of desegregating library training programs. Available from ALA Neal-Schuman.
Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore (University of Illinois Press)
Nurhaizatul Jamil, Associate Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies
Nurhaizatul Jamil conducted an ethnographic analysis of Malay Muslim women in Singapore who participated in Islamic self-help classes for personal and spiritual development. The book analyzes these women’s desires and practices with a context of minoritized Muslim subject-making and the disciplining of race and religion in Singapore. Available from University of Illinois Press.
The Articulate Body: Dance and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century (University Press of Florida)
Whitney Laemmli, Assistant Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, contributor
Whitney Laemmli contributed to an academic volume examining the intersection of dance and science during the 19th century. Laemmli’s chapter is a response to other works in the collection that discuss the relationship between Victorian scientific thought and the conventions of ballet during that period. Available from University Press of Florida.
Social Entrepreneurship in Art Therapy: Creative Changemakers in Action (Routledge)
Mitra Reyhani Ghadim, Visiting Associate Professor, Creative Arts Therapy, contributor
This collection of case studies shows how art therapists are using social entrepreneurship to make systemic changes and broaden access to their services. In the chapter “The Living Museum, a Contemporary Art Movement,” Mitra Reyhani Ghadim and coauthor Rose Ehemann explore the art studio at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York, which is home to a robust collection of work created by the center’s patients. Available from Routledge.
Fragments of Repression and Resistance: A.K.P. Rule in Turkey (Peter Lang)
Kumru Toktamis, Associate Professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, coeditor with Isabel David
Coedited by Kumru Toktamis, Fragments of Repression and Resistance: A.K.P. Rule in Turkey documents and analyzes the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The volume also focuses on how citizens in Turkey have organized to resist and protest their government. Available from Peter Lang.
Read more about recently published faculty books in the 2024 roundup.
Do you have a suggestion of a recently published book by a Pratt faculty member that we should consider adding to this year’s list? Email Prattfolio at prattfolio@pratt.edu.