B.A. San Jose State University; M.A. and Ph.D., History and Humanities, Stanford University

Professor Ghirardo teaches history and theory of architecture, with special emphasis on 20th century Italian architecture, gender and architecture, Italian Renaissance architecture and urbanism, and contemporary criticism. Before coming to USC, she taught at Stanford University and Texas A & M. While at USC she has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, University of Cape Town, South Africa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, SCI-Arc and Rice University. Her books include Building New Communities: New Deal America and Fascist Italy, (translated into Italian in 2003), Mark Mack, and Architecture After Modernism, which has been translated into five languages and won a USC Phi Kappa Phi Award 1997. She edited Out of Site in 1991, essays on social aspects of architecture, in addition to numerous articles in journals in the United States and Europe. Among the honors she has received are the Danforth Fellowship 1974-79, two Fulbright Fellowships, 1976 and 2002, an NEH Fellowship 2002, two Graham Foundation grants, and in 2002-3 she was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1985, she served as the American juror at the Venice Biennale, and in 1988 she became a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (FAAR). She was elected President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 1994, and in 2002 she was appointed ACSA representative on the National Architectural Accreditation Board. Other service includes 11 years as the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education and co-founding Archetype, in addition to serving on the editorial board of Journal of Architecture and Thresholds. At USC she has served on the Faculty Senate, and in 2004 was elected to the Executive Committee of the USC Faculty Senate. She has lectured at universities throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and Australia, including lectures at the universities of Parma and Padova, Italy, in 2004. Beginning in 2003, she convenes the SOM Jury and edits the SOM Journal. Her current research focuses on women's spaces in a Renaissance Italian city, twentieth century Italian architecture, and issues of identity, heritage and place in Cape Town, South Africa.