Dr. Surry Schlabs

Biography

Surry Schlabs is a historian and teacher whose work engages with aesthetic qualities of shared experiences, exploring a range of socially charged participatory aesthetic political practices characterized by a distinct public character in socially intensive contexts. His doctoral dissertation titled 'Waiting Architecture: John Dewey Limits Modern Art' is concerned with the specific relevance of John Dewey’s Pragmatist philosophy to the evolution of modernist art and architecture in the middle decades of the 20th century. Schlabs' body of work embodies an implicit aspiration towards architecture as a way of thinking, making things, and examining the aesthetic limits of conditions—perhaps even the end of art. Before obtaining his PhD from Yale, Schlabs worked for several years in New Haven as a project manager and designer for Gray Organschi Architecture and the Yale Urban Design Workshop.

Research Interests