Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The third annual Alchemy Lecture brought together four “Alchemists”—thinkers and practitioners working across disciplines and geographies—to share a constellation of ideas for the future. Their urgent, poignant and inventive lectures compose The City of Our Dreaming, which shares their ideas for cities and how to shape them according to community needs. Together, V. Mitch McEwen, Laleh Khalili, Gabriela Leandro Pereira, and Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offer new models for crafting architectures of freedom in disparate imagined spaces. From suggesting a city modeled on buoyancy that reconsiders displacement to a dream of radical kinship and bonds through reciprocal giving, to “projects paved by the audacity to inhabit” that are built from dreams—the site from which all Black emancipation begins—and to the ways collectives form at the thresholds between things, The City of our Dreaming is a clarion call for new conceptions of city life. The Alchemists imagine the architectures and infrastructures that make possible, inevitable and irresistible gestures of freedom, modes of sustenance, and the necessity and pleasure of breaking bread together.
Price: $26.95
Pages: 182
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
18 November 2025
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781478038696
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"The City of our Dreaming offers new insight into how we might properly conceive the ways we live with and for each other — from stranger to kin, private to public and with an ethic of relationship and reciprocity. This is how these thinkers dream — hopeful for a world and cities where everyone thrives and is keenly aware of our ties to each other and the biosphere."—Matt Henderson, Winnipeg Free Press
"I loved the diversity of views inside this panel-style lecture. . . . And while I enjoyed it and love being able to read and engage with the lecture through this volume, I remain a little sad that I didn’t get to experience it in person, because these are such thoughtful pieces and the opportunity to ask questions and discuss in the room when they were delivered would have added so much to an already-powerful reading. An excellent addition to an excellent lecture series."—Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader
"I loved the diversity of views inside this panel-style lecture. . . . And while I enjoyed it and love being able to read and engage with the lecture through this volume, I remain a little sad that I didn’t get to experience it in person, because these are such thoughtful pieces and the opportunity to ask questions and discuss in the room when they were delivered would have added so much to an already-powerful reading. An excellent addition to an excellent lecture series."—Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader
Laleh Khalili is the Al Qasimi Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written or edited seven books, including Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration.
V. Mitch Mcewen leads Harlem-based Atelier Office and teaches on the faculty at Princeton University's School of Architecture. She is one of ten co-founders of the Black Reconstruction Collective, and her design work has been commissioned by MoMA and the Venice Architecture Biennale US Pavilion.
Gabriela Leandro Pereira is a professor on the Faculty of Architecture at the Federal University of Bahia. She is a member of the Lugar Comum Research Group and coordinator of the Corpo, Discurso e Território Study Group.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight books, including her latest nonfiction project Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. Her 2021 album, Theory of Ice, was shortlisted for a Polaris Music Prize.
V. Mitch Mcewen leads Harlem-based Atelier Office and teaches on the faculty at Princeton University's School of Architecture. She is one of ten co-founders of the Black Reconstruction Collective, and her design work has been commissioned by MoMA and the Venice Architecture Biennale US Pavilion.
Gabriela Leandro Pereira is a professor on the Faculty of Architecture at the Federal University of Bahia. She is a member of the Lugar Comum Research Group and coordinator of the Corpo, Discurso e Território Study Group.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight books, including her latest nonfiction project Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. Her 2021 album, Theory of Ice, was shortlisted for a Polaris Music Prize.
Introduction / Christina Sharpe 1
buoyant futures, after fixity, dreaming in bounce / V. Mitch McEwen 7
Breaking Bread Together / Laleh Khalili 39
Three Gestures of Black Freedom and a Dream Map / Gabriela Leandro Pereira 77
No Line Could Make Sense of It / Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 113
Notes and References 151
About the Alchemists 169
Acknowledgments 173
buoyant futures, after fixity, dreaming in bounce / V. Mitch McEwen 7
Breaking Bread Together / Laleh Khalili 39
Three Gestures of Black Freedom and a Dream Map / Gabriela Leandro Pereira 77
No Line Could Make Sense of It / Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 113
Notes and References 151
About the Alchemists 169
Acknowledgments 173