B.A., University of California, Berkeley M.A., M. Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University

Vittoria Di Palma is Associate Professor of Architectural History and Theory in the School of Architecture at USC. She specializes in modern European architectural history and theory, with particular concentrations in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture, early modern land use and landscape, and contemporary landscape theory and design. Her research in architectural history is centrally concerned with how visuality and aesthetics inform the design, representation, and experience of buildings and environments, while her work in the environmental humanities focuses on the ways in which conceptions and images of landscape operate in the collective imaginary.

Before joining the University of Southern California in 2012, she taught in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, in the Department of Art History at Rice University, and in the Histories and Theories of Architecture graduate program of the Architectural Association in London, for which she served as co-Director. She has held visiting positions at the University of Calgary and The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO), and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Dumbarton Oaks, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, and The Huntington Library.

Di Palma is the author of Wasteland, A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), a study of early modern British conceptions of hostile territories that aims to provide a prehistory of current attitudes toward toxic and derelict postindustrial sites. By focusing on commons, swamps, mountains, and forests, the book argues that these kinds of resistant landscapes are united not by any essential physical characteristics, but rather by the aversive reactions they inspired. Wasteland was awarded the 2016 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize by the American Historical Association for the best book in European history from ancient times to 1815, the 2016 Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award by the Society of Architectural Historians for the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture, the 2015 Louis Gottschalk Prize by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for the most outstanding historical or critical study on the eighteenth century, a 2015 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize by The Foundation for Landscape Studies, and a 2015 PROSE Award (American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence, Honorable Mention in Architecture and Urban Planning). She also co-edited (with Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri) Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (London: Routledge, 2009). Vittoria Di Palma teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture (historical and contemporary) and in the environmental humanities.

COURSES:

ARCH 314: Architectural Theory Since 1960

ARCH 414: Perspectives in History and Theory in Architecture

ARCH 432: Architecture of the Public Realm

ARCH 441: History of Architectural Theory: Renaissance to Modern

ARCH 465: The Landscape Imaginary

ARCH 563: Contemporary Architectural Theory

ARCH 606: Advanced Architectural Theory

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books Wasteland, A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014) http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300197792/wasteland

Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City, edited by Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton, and Marina Lathouri (London: Routledge, 2009) http://www.routledge.com/Intimate-Metropolis-Urban-Subjects-in-the-Modern-City/Di-Palma-Periton-Lathouri/p/book/9780415415071

Articles and Book Chapters

"Willful Waters: The Los Angeles River," (with Alexander Robinson) River Cities: Historical and Contemporary, edited by Thaïsa Way and John Beardsley (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library/Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2017)

"In the Mood for Landscape," Thinking the Contemporary Landscape, edited by Christophe Girot and Dora Imhof (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2017): 15-29 https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781616895204

"A Natural History of Ornament," Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016): 20-33 http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10693.html

"Is Landscape Painting?" Is Landscape...?: Essays on the Identity of Landscape, edited by Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim (London: Routledge, 2016): 44-70 https://www.routledge.com/Is-Landscape-Essays-on-the-Identity-of-Landscape/Doherty-Waldheim/p/book/9781138018471

"Empire Gastronomy," AA Files 68 (Spring 2014): 114-124 https://usc.academia.edu/VittoriaDiPalma

"Flow: Rivers, Roads, Routes, and Cartographies of Leisure," Routes, Roads and Landscapes, edited by Mari Hvattum, Brita Brenna, Beate Elvebakk, and Janike Kampevold Larsen (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011): 27-43 https://www.routledge.com/Routes-Roads-and-Landscapes/Brenna-Larsen-Hvattum/p/book/9781409408208

"Zoom: Google Earth and Global Intimacy," Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City, edited by Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton, and Marina Lathouri (London: Routledge, 2009): 239-270 https://www.routledge.com/Intimate-Metropolis-Urban-Subjects-in-the-Modern-City/Di-Palma-Periton-Lathouri/p/book/9780415415071

"Blurs, Blots, and Clouds: Architecture and the Dissolution of the Surface," AA Files 54 (Summer 2006): 24-35 https://usc.academia.edu/VittoriaDiPalma

"Fragmentation, Multiplication, Permutation: Natural Histories and Sylvan Aesthetics from Bacon to Evelyn," Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished: Essays Presented to Robin Middleton. Edited by Barry Bergdoll and Werner Oechslin (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006): 233-244 https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fragments+architecture+and+the+unfinished

"Architecture and the Organic Metaphor," Journal of Architecture 11:4 (September 2006): 1-6 http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjar20/11/4?nav=tocList

"Drinking Cider in Paradise: Science, Improvement, and the Politics of Fruit Trees," A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Early Modern England, edited by Adam Smyth (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer: 2004): 161-177 https://boydellandbrewer.com/a-pleasing-sinne-hb.html

"Architecture, Environment, and Emotion: Quatremère de Quincy and the Concept of Character," AA Files 47 (September 2002): 45-56 https://usc.academia.edu/VittoriaDiPalma