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Assistant Professor Madhuri Desai.

Madhuri Desai
Assistant Professor of Art History

221 Arts Building
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865-4885
msd13@psu.edu

Education
Ph.D. in architecture, specialization in the history of architecture and urbanism (University of California at Berkeley)
M.A. in landscape architecture (University of Texas at Arlington)
M.A. in architecture, specialization in historic preservation (School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India)
B.A. in architecture (School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India)

New to Penn State in 2007, Dr. Desai teaches courses in Asian architecture, urbanism and art. Her scholarly interests lie in the area of South Asian architecture and urbanism, and she brings a comparative and inter-disciplinary focus to her work. Her dissertation, entitled “Resurrecting Banaras: Urban Space, Architecture and Religious Boundaries,” examines the intersection of colonial orientalism and indigenous religious revivalism in the remaking of the city of Banaras in northern India in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Desai's dissertation research was supported by an International Dissertation Research Fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and through grants awarded by the University of California at Berkeley. She has published her research in the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and has also published book reviews in this journal as well as in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her research interests include the historiography of South Asian architecture, colonial urbanism in South Asia, and the relationship between the South Asian city and cinema. She has presented her research at a number of conferences, and she has organized several conference panels, including at the annual meetings of the Society of Architectural Historians, and at annual South Asia conferences.

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Last Updated: Thursday, February 27, 2008