About

A historian of architecture, I focus on modern architecture in Germany, South Asia, and the United States.  I am also particularly interested in gender, global histories, and modern religious architecture.

Education

PhD and MA, University of Pennsylvania, 1990

BA, Yale University, 1982

Publications

 “The Diversity of Women’s Engagement with Modern Architecture and Design: Three Case Studies,” The Plan Journal 4 (2019): 465-80.


 “Beyond the Confederacy: Who Remembers What When in Berlin and Richmond?,” English Language Notes 57 (October 2019): 160-67


 “Rich pickings,” Architecture Review (September 2019): 70-73.


 “The Place of Faith: Accommodating Religious Minorities in the German and Irish Cityscape,” in Burcu Dogramaci and Birgit Mersmann, eds., Handbook of Art and Global Migration: Theories, Practices, and Global Challenges (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019) 130-48.


 “Clothing Bauhaus Bodies,” in Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler, Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019) 123-44.


Co-editor with Lisa Godson, Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland and Beyond: Influence, Process and Afterlife since 1945 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019).


 “Architecture, Its Histories, and their Audiences,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 77 (2018): 397-405.


 “A Whisper Rather than a Shout: Ursula Wilm and Heinz Hallmann’s Topography of Terror,” in Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Elizabeth Otto, Art and Resistance in Germany (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018) 173-89.


 “Von der Leinwand zum Körper: Die Kleiderentwürfe von Sonia Delaunay,” in Karl R. Kegler, Anna Minta and Niklas Naehrig, eds., RaumKleider: Verbindungen zwischen Architekturraum, Körper und Kleid (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018) 79-98.


 “Architecture as a Fine Art: The Implications for the Writing of Architectural History,” Architectural Journal 595 (2018) 78-83 [published in Chinese].


Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).


 “Darmstadt in Context — Architecture and Design Reform c 1900,” in Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Hessen, der Wissenschaftsstadt Darmstadt and the Deutschen Nationalkomitee von ICOMOS, eds., Eine Stadt müssen wir erbauen, eine ganze Stadt!,” Die Künsterkolonie auf der Mathildenhöhe (Wiesbaden: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, 2017) 61-68.


 “Is Modern Architecture Good?” in Peter Voggler and Stefan Graf, eds., Architecture in Asmara: Colonial Origin and Postcolonial Experiences (Berlin: Dom, 2017) 38-45.


 “Exiles and Immigration,” Very Vary Veri 5 (2017): 5-14.


 “Schocken Department Store: ‘The Art of a Master,’” in David Leatherbarrow and Alexander Eisenschmidt, Twentieth-Century Architecture, vol. 4, of The Companions to the History of Architecture, ed. Harry Mallgrave (Malden: Wiley/Blackwell, 2017), 207-19.


 “Introduction” and “Louis Kahn’s Yale Center for British Art: An Irish Perspective,” in Carla Briggs, Nicola Figgis, Lynda Mulvin, and Paula Murphy, eds., Art History After Francoise Henry: 50 Years at UCD – 1965-2015(Dublin/Kinsale: UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy/Gandon Editions: 2016) 6-11, 150-61.


 “Reconstructing faith,” Architectural Review (April 2016): 84-90.


Editor, India in Art in Ireland (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).


 “Architecture in Transit: Three High-Tech Historicist Airports,” in Anne Fuchs and J. J. Long, eds., Time in German Literature and Culture, 1900-2015: Acceleration and Slowness (Basingstoke: Pallgrave Macmillan, 2015) 45-68.


 “Ausstellungen erleben.  Lilly Reichs Produktdisplays 1927-31,” in Jörn Schafaff and Benjamin Wihstutz, Sowohl als auch dazwischen.  Erfarhungsräume der Kunst (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015) 56-76.


 “Gesamtkunstwerk and Gender: From Domesticity to Branding and Back Again,” in Cartsen Ruhl, Chris Dähne and Rixt Hoekstra, eds., The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art: Henry Van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept (Berlin: Jovis, 2015) 94-104.


 “Beyond the masters: modernism in South Asian architecture,” in Stephen Ross and Allana Lindgren, eds., The Modernist World (London: Routledge, 2015) 100-08.


Architecture since 1400 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).


 


 “The use of ruins in postwar German church reconstruction,” in JoAnne Mancini and Keith Bresnahan, Architecture and Armed Conflict: The Politics of Destruction (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 198-211.


 


 “Louis Kahn in Ahmedabad and Dhaka,” ABE Journal: European Architecture beyond Europehttp://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=656, posted 7 July 2014.


 


 “Beyond postcolonialism: New Directions in the history of nonwestern architecture,” Frontiers of Architectural Research 3.1 (2014): 1-9.


 


Rachel Lee and, “Marg Magazine: A Tryst with Architectural Modernity: Modern Architecture as seen from an independent India,” ABE Journal: European Architecture beyond Europehttp://dev.abejournal.eu/index.php?id=81, posted 15 February 2013.


 


 “From Chicago to Berlin and Back Again,” in Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelyn Bass, eds., Chicago Makes Modern: How Creative Minds Changed Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 91-109.


 


 “Beyond Cold War Interpretations: Shaping a New Bauhaus Heritage,” New German Critique 116 (Summer 2012): 11-24.


 


 “Between Revolution and Reform: The Bauhaus in Context, 1919-23,” in Barbican Art Gallery, Bauhaus: Art as Life (London: Koenig Books, 2012) 18-20.


Co-editor with Anne Fuchs and Linda Shortt, Debating German Cultural Identity since 1989 (Rochester: Camden House, 2011).


 


“Louis Kahn’s Monumentality: Theory and Practice,” in Carsten Ruhl, ed., Mythos Monument: Urban Strategien in Architektur und Kunst seit 1945 (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 77-98.


 


 “Expressionism and Experiment: The Sommerfeld House,” in Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Museum für Gestaltung, Stifttung Bauhaus Dessau, und Klassik Stiftung Weimar, eds., Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model(Ostfildern: Hatje-Canz Verlag 2009), pp. 51-54.


 “Fragile Allianz: Über die Beziehung zwischen Henry van de Velde und Walter Gropius,” in Anja Baumhoff and Magdalena Droste, eds., Mythos Bauhaus: Zwischen Selbsterfindung und Enthistorisierung (Berlin: Reimer, 2009), pp. 35-52.


 


 “Architecture of the Cold War.  Louis Kahn and Edward Durrell Stone in South Asia,” in Anke Köth, Kai Krauskopf, and Andreas Schwarting, eds., Building America: Eine große Erzähluung, vol. 3 (Dresden: Thelem, 2008), pp. 169-82.


 


“Inventing Industrial Culture in Essen,” in Paul Jaskot and Gavriel Rosenfeld, eds., Beyond Berlin: German Cities Confront the Nazi Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 116-39.


 


Editor, Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).


 


 “Dominikus Böhm in Amerika,” in Wolfgang Voigt and Ingeborg Flagge, eds., Dominikus Böhm: 1880-1955(Frankfurt: Deutsches Architektur Museum, 2005), pp. 89-101.


 


 “The Bauhaus in America Revisited: The Impact of the Cold War on the Reception of Modern Architecture in the United States,” in Rebekka Habermas and Rebekka von Mallinkrodt, eds., Interkultureller Transfer und nationaler Eigensinn: Europäische und anglo-amerikanische Positionen der Kulturwissenschaften (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2004), pp. 195-208.


 


“Moderate Modernism: Sacred Architecture in St. Louis and its Suburbs,” in Eric Mumford, ed., Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University and Postwar American Architectuer, 1948-1973 (St. Louis: School of Architecture, Washington University, 2004), pp. 27-40.


 


“Eric Mendelsohn in America: Reinventing a Reputation for Modernism,” in Bernd Nicolai, ed., Architektur und Exil: Kulturtransfer und architektonische Emigration 1930 bis 1950 (Trier: Porta Alba Verlag, 2003), pp. 133-43.


 


“The Drama of Illumination: Visions of Community from Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany,” in Richard Etlin, ed., Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 181-201.


 


“Kirchstiegfeld: A European Perspective on the Construction of Community,” Places (Winter 2001), pp. 56-61.


 


German Architecture for a Mass Audience (London: Routledge Press, 2000).


 


In the Spirit of Our Age: Eric Mendelsohn’s B’nai Amoona Synagogue (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 2000).  Excerpt published as “Gateway Album,” Gateway- Heritage 21.1 (2000), pp. 46-49.


 


“Einstein, Mendelsohn und Finlay-Freundlich in Potsdam,” “Großstadtarchitektur in Berlin: Der Woga-Komplex und das Universum Kino,” “Die Textilfabrik Krasnoje Snamja in Leningrad,” and “Kleinere Bauten für die jüdische Gemeinschaft in Tilsit, Königsberg und Essen,” in Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953).  Gebauten Welten, Regina Stephan, ed. (Stuttgart: Hatje Verlag, 1998), pp. 30-43, 134-43, 167-77.  Published in English as Eric Mendelsohn: Architect 1887-1953 (New York: Monacelli Press, 1999) and in an expanded edition as Erich Mendelsohn: Dynamics and Function, Realized Visions of a Cosmopolitan Architect (Institut für Auslandsbeziehung, 2000).


 


 “Memory and the Cityscape: The German Architectural Debate about Postmodernism,” in German Politics and Society 17.3 (1999), pp. 71-83.


 


“From Messel to Mendelsohn: German Department Store Architecture in Defense of Urban and Economic Change,” in Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of Consumption: the European Department Store 1850-1939 (Ashgate, 1999), pp. 252-78.


 


“Between Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit,” in Ruins of Modernity: Erich Mendelsohn’s Hat Factory in Luckenwalde; AA Files 4 (1998): 8-13.


 


Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).


 


“Form versus Function: The Importance of the Indian Institute of Management in the development of Louis Kahn’s Courtyard Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 49 (1995), pp. 38-49.


 


“Expressionism, Relativity, and the Einstein Tower,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53 (1994), pp. 392-413.

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