Jess Myers Selected for 2025 SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize on Race and Built Environment

We are pleased to announce that Jess Myers has been awarded the 2025 SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize.

An ongoing collaboration between the Society of Architectural Historians, Places Journal, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the award supports original public scholarship on race and the built environment.

Myers is an assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University, where she teaches and researches urbanism, sound studies, and the politics of occupancy. As the recipient of this prize, she will produce a major work of public scholarship, to be published in Places, and deliver a related public lecture, to be presented at the Graham Foundation in Chicago.

Myers’ essay will focus on “the spatial politics of urban listening,” in particular on an audiosocial analysis of two traumatic recent events in New York City: the killings of Jordan Neely, in the subway, and Akai Gurley, in a public housing stairwell. In each case, the sounds in question — screams in a subway car; a door opening in a stairwell — emerged as pivotal evidence in the courtroom trials that followed. Blending sound studies, geography, and urbanism, Myers will examine racialized urban infrastructures and public expectations for safety, as well as what have been considered reasonable reactions to breaches of such expectations.

“What interests me most about the SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize is the emphasis on public scholarship,” Myers said. “These organizations have invested in critical scholarship on the city — essays, articles, and creative projects that I rely on in my own teaching. I’m excited to have the opportunity to contribute to this effort.”