Echoes, Ripples, Wake: Casting Art and Flesh is an edited volume that offers a critical reappraisal of plaster casts and their afterlives. The book is edited by Yaëlle Biro and Noémie Étienne and forthcoming October 2026 with De Gruyter Oldenbourg in the series Traces: Public History and Heritage Studies.
Writing
Cast-in-Place: The Reactivation of Nineteenth-Century Plaster Casts in Brutalist Architecture
My chapter, “Cast-in-Place: The Reactivation of Nineteenth-Century Plaster Casts in Brutalist Architecture,” traces the changing meanings and values of nineteenth-century plaster casts in the United States through the case of Yale University’s historic cast collection. Focusing on their incorporation into Paul Rudolph’s Brutalist architecture on campus, I show how casts long removed from public view were reactivated and revalued, creating new relationships between artistic traditions and modern architecture while mutually reinforcing the significance of both the casts and the building.