Catherine Fennell’s current project about public housing in the Midwest has received a faculty grant from the Office of the Provost. Her work examines how the social and material legacies of 20^th-century urbanism shape the politics of social difference, collective obligation, and utopian imagination in the contemporary U.S. In this article on Columbia News, Fennell discusses her work along with how she came to be an urban anthropologist, and advice for anyone contemplating the same path.