Paul Niell Receives First Year Assistant Professor Award

Congratulations to Dr. Paul Niell, who received the First Year Assistant Professor Award in the amount of $20,000 to launch a new research project that focuses on the architectural history of Ponce, Puerto Rico a city located on the island’s southwest coast.

The working title of the planned book is Ponce Creole: Architecture and Modernity in a Puerto Rican Sugar Capital, 1850-1930. It considers the Ponce elite as active agents in the promotion, expression, and negotiation of modernity through architecture and visual culture. The research will contribute to the broader literature on global modernities in the nineteenth and and early twentieth century.  Furthermore, it speaks to the use of the built environment to order and mediate the social ranks generated by modernization in the Spanish Caribbean.