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Emeritus & Retired Faculty

Mary N. Woods

  • Professor Emerita
Curriculum Vitae (CV)

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Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural history
  • Architectural theory
  • Collaborative practice
  • Film/video/sound
  • Historic preservation planning
  • Photography
  • Visual representation

Mary N. Woods is the author of such seminal works as: Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi (2016); Beyond the Architect’s Eye: Photographs of the American Built Environment (2009); and From Craft to Profession: Practice of Architecture in 19th-Century America (1999). She and filmmaker Vani Subramanian co-produced Cinema Pe Cinema: The theatres. The movies. And us (2024).

The first woman tenured in the history of Cornell’s architecture department, she is the inaugural Michael McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory and recipient of the Tau Sigma Delta Silver Medal.

Forthcoming are: essays reimagining Indian single screens and Clarence Stein and cinemas; exhibition and catalog of Mumbai’s architecture of the night with photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri; and book on postindustrial cities in U.S. and India with Annie Schentag, historian and preservationist, and Nipun Prabhakar, architect and photographer.

Her B.A. is from Duke University and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Headshot of Mary Woods

Academic Research Areas

  • Architectural history
  • Architectural theory
  • Collaborative practice
  • Film/video/sound
  • Historic preservation planning
  • Photography
  • Visual representation
  • Movie poster
  • people in line to enter through a bright pink curtain
  • Person buying a movie ticket from an exterior window
  • Man seated at a card table outside

Cinema Pe Cinema: The theatres. The movies. And Us (2024). Documentary film about single-screen cinemas in India.

Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi (Routledge, 2016 and 2018).

Beyond the Architect’s Eye: Photographs and the American Built Environment (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2009 and 2014).

From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1999).

“Against the Grain: Women Architects Rereading and Reimagining the Archive and Monograph,” in Women and Architectural History: The Monstrous Regiment Then and Now, ed. Dana Arnold (Routledge, 2024).

Mumbai’s Architecture of the Night catalog and exhibition with Chirodeep Chaudhuri, under review.

Festivities, BDD Chawls at Worli, Mumbai (2017). image / Mary N. Woods

“Saving the Once and Future Legacies of India’s Single-Screen Cinemas,” under review.

Palace Talkies, Mumbai (2017). image / Mary N. Woods

“Building Community in the Dark: Clarence Stein, Hollywood, and Movie Theatres,” under review.

Clarence Stein, La Casa, Brentwood, California, 1933-34 (Clarence Stein Papers, #3600, Cornell University Library).

I am very fortunate to still be learning from and working with colleagues who were once my students at Cornell and other universities in the U.S. and India.

Books

Publications

  • The City Has Memory: Images of Ruin and Reclamation in Bombay/Mumbai

    Candide No. 12, eds. Axel Sowa and Ela Kacel (January 2021): 023–035.

  • Women Architects in India: Dreaming through Design

    Namita Dharia in Conversation with Mary Woods, Marg, 72 #1 (September 2020): 76–87.

  • Covid 19 Architectural Journalism: A Conversation with Peggy Deamer and Mary N. Woods

    Platform (July 27, 2021).

Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

  • Jury Special Mention, Film SouthAsia

    “Cinema Pe Cinema: The theatres. The movies. And us.” in Kathmandu, Nepal
    2024

  • Grant, Clarence Stein Institute

    “Cinema Pe Cinema” post-production with Vani Subramanian
    2022–23

  • Tau Sigma Delta Silver Media for Distinguished Scholarship

    Tau Sigma Delta: National Honorary Society for Architecture and the Allied Arts
    2018

  • Visiting Scholar, Canadian Centre for Architecture

    “Gordon Matta-Clark and the Ruins of Postindustrial Cities”
    2015

  • Inaugural Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory

    Cornell University
    2010–14

Selected Exhibitions and Presentations

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