Stella Nair

Director, Andean Working Group; Associate Professor, Department of Art History
Department: Art History
snair@humnet.ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Andean Region

Stella Nair’s scholarship focuses on the built environment of Indigenous communities in the Americas and is shaped by her interests in spatial practices, cultural landscapes, aural and ephemeral architecture, gender studies, construction technology, and hemispheric networks. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, Nair has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, with ongoing projects in the South Central Andes.

Nair’s publications explore a range of subjects and regions such as Inca royal estates, colonial Andean paintings, early modern soundscapes, eighteenth century woven roofs, and Brazilian urbanism. Nair’s current book project, Inca Architecture: Chapters in the History of a (Gendered) Profession, offers new perspectives on the Inca built environment by highlighting the profound ways in which women designed, constructed, used, and gave meaning to Inca spaces and places. For this work, Nair has received the “Research Excellence Award” from the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. In addition, Nair is also working on a book with Paul Niell (co-edited), The Forgotten Canopy: Ecology, Ephemeral Architecture, and Imperialism in the Caribbean, South American, and Transatlantic World, which examines the deep and long standing architectural, ecological, and cultural connections among distinct Indigenous, African, and African descendant peoples in the Americas.

Nair directs the Andean Laboratory and the Architecture laboratory at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, both of which foster research for students (graduate and undergraduate) as well as affiliated researchers working on Andean and Architectural topics at UCLA. In addition, Nair co-founded and advises three working groups on campus: the Andean Working Group, which brings together Andean specialists in the greater Los Angeles region to share research; the Architecture Working Group, which welcomes all scholars interested in architecture, especially of the Indigenous Americas and African diaspora; and with Kevin Terraciano, the Indigenous Material and Visual Culture Reading Group, which brings together students and faculty across campus who work on Indigenous material culture A.D 1450-1850.