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‘How do sources determine the histories we can tell about architecture, urban space, and the agents that enliven it,’ course asks

Princeton University students can ponder the role of “feminist” and “gender” theory in the writing of architecture histories in a class offered this spring.

“Queer Spaces in the World” is offered by the school of architecture and taught by Professor S.E. Eisterer. It is cross listed in the gender and sexuality studies program.

“How can feminist, gender, queer and trans* theory help us chart new avenues for writing critical architectural histories that are attentive to discourses of difference but also narratives of equity,” the course description states.

“Which methods, beyond conventional modes of architectural inquiry, can we employ to uncover histories of groups and institutions that have actively resisted dominant regimes of power and their corresponding systems of knowledge,” the description asks.

Eisterer did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment about the purpose and potential objectives for the course in the past month. The school’s media relations team and architecture school also did not respond to The College Fix.

“S.E.’s research focuses on spatial histories of dissidence, feminist, queer, and trans* theory in architecture, as well as the labor of social and ecological movements,” according to her faculty website.

However, an educational commentator for a center-right think tank said the course aims to get students to accept a certain political ideology.

“[T]he obvious purpose of these courses is to force students at this elite institution to imbibe politically charged doctrines that establish an excuse for ever-greater interference in people’s personal lives,” Sam Karnick told The College Fix via email.

The Heartland Institute senior fellow said the course also wants students “to take this notion to the elite centers of power for which they are presumably destined.”

“The claim behind these courses and the studies behind them is that social arrangements have not given sufficient power and authority to certain groups of people, whom these intellectuals describe as marginalized,” Karnick told The Fix.

“Those who disagree with this agenda must be marginalized. That self-contradiction is sufficient to refute their case,” Karnick said.

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Eisterer, the instructor, has a background in applying identity politics to architecture.

The website Aggregate describes her as a “queer architectural historian.”

The Princeton professor also edited a book about “methods and theories in writing about feminist and LGBTQIA+ spaces in architecture.”

She is also the co-founder of the Queer Working Space Group and a board member of the Insurgent Domesticities Group.

The “Queer Working Space Group” hosted a symposium in December 2024 with funding from the Swiss National Foundation.

“We will explore homemaking as a means of queer liberation across global diasporic communities,” the announcement promised.

“Throughout the four days, we will unpack the architecture of diasporic homes as material and social experiments, examining how various forms of contemporary marginalization—like ethnicity, race, migration, and gender—shape spatial politics,” according to the description. “Through roundtable discussions, symposiums, performances, and archiving workshops, amongst others, participants will collaborate to investigate how queer perspectives can redefine our understanding of home and community.”

Princeton students wanting to learn more about gender and sexuality topics have other options this semester.

A course called “Bad Girls: Gender, Sexuality, and Deviance” will explore how boys and girls “perform their gender and/or sexuality in ways that fall outside of the norm.”

Students can also take a course called “The Poetics of Memory: Fragility and Liberation.”

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