D. Medina Lasansky

D. Medina Lasansky is an architectural historian whose research and teaching focus on the intersection of the built environment, politics, and popular culture. She has published on topics ranging from the pink plastic lawn flamingo to graffiti. She is also the author of the Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Penn State, 2004), coeditor of Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance, and Place (Berg, 2004), editor of the Renaissance. Revised, Expanded, Unexpurgated (Periscope, 2014), Archi.Pop (Bloomsbury, 2014), and author of Hidden Histories (University of Florence, DIDA Press, 2018). She is the recipient of grants including a Fulbright to Italy and residency fellowships at the Wolfsonian, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the University of Turin, and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University.

Related News

• AAP Launchpad: Spring 2024
• Announcing: Playing Place — Board Games, Popular Culture, Space edited by Chad Randl and D. Medina Lasansky

Classes (Selected)

• ARCH 6805 Practicum: Gastro-PornThis course exercises history of architecture and urbanism's capacities for affecting contemporary events through critical associations with the past. The workshop culminates in an exhibition, publication, symposium, curricular initiative, or other public occasion. Enrollment of qualified graduate students from associated fields is encouraged.
• ARCH 6819 Sensational Space: Architecture and the Seven SensesThis course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of History of Architecture and Urbanism. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course's scope and content. For precise content, please see the Architecture Department webpage.
• ARCH 6819 Archi.PopThis course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of History of Architecture and Urbanism. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course's scope and content. For precise content, please see the Architecture Department webpage.
• ARCH 6819 Renaissance RiffsThis course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of History of Architecture and Urbanism. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course's scope and content. For precise content, please see the Architecture Department webpage.
• ARCH 6819 20th Century Italian DesignThis course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of History of Architecture and Urbanism. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course's scope and content. For precise content, please see the Architecture Department webpage.

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Provost's Award for Distinguished Scholarship (2005)
• Visiting scholar, Study Centre, Canadian Centre for Architecture (2004)
• Faculty fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell (2003–04)
• Research fellow, the Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach (2003)
• Research fellow, Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Americani ed Euro-americani, Studi Politici, Universita di Torino (2003)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• "Was there an Italian Renaissance? And Whose Was It?" at the conference "Unmapping the Renaissance" organized by the Max Planck Research Group at the Kunsthistorisches Institut and the Villa Romana, Florence (2015)
• "The Fascist Reinvention of the Renaissance City" for the "Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives On Urban Space, An International Seminar," at Università di Firenze (2015)
• "Tuscan Gastro Porn" at the conference "Tuscan Territories: Rural-Urban Dynamics," Prato, Italy (2014)

Publications (Selected)

• "Beyond the Guidebook: Edith Wharton's Rediscovery of San Vivaldo." In Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, edited by Emily Orlando and Meredith Goldsmith. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016.
• "Sensationalizing OMA's Milstein Hall at Cornell University," Senses and Society 9, no. 1 (2014): 99–107
• "Sacred Graffiti." In Renaissance. Revised, Expanded, Unexpurgated, edited by D. Medina Lasansky. Reading: Periscope, 2014.