Adam Longenbach, PhD



LinkedIn / Academia.edu



Personnel from the Hollywood film studio RKO Pictures constructing a stage set for the film Flying Leatherneck, Camp Pendleton, California, USA, 1950. Photo courtesy of the US National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.




 Originally trained as an architect, I am an historian and teacher whose broader interests span nineteenth and twentieth century histories of the United States and “the US in the world.” My specializations are in architecture,  urban, and environmental history, history of technology, and histories of US visual and entertainment culture, particularly where these topics intersect with American militarism and empire. I am especially drawn to histories of the American West, histories of California and the Great Basin, transpacific histories, and the history of Los Angeles, though I retain a special interest in researching and writing about the history of New York City, where I lived, worked, and studied for many years before beginning my doctoral studies at Harvard University.

I intertwined these topics in my dissertation: Stagecraft / Statecraft: The Military “Mock Village” and the Fabrication of American Empire, 1941-1945. Building on ideas I first explored in a 2017 essay for The Avery Review, this project examined the invention and proliferation of “mock villages”: full-scale imitation urban and natural environments, constructed by the US Army and Hollywood professionals, for the purpose of simulating warfare. Broadly stated, the dissertation showed how, during the Second World War, the invention of these military tools coincided with the development of new and persistent forms of US occupation and control. This research was awarded a Carter Manny Citation of Special Recognition from The Graham Foundation in 2023 and a 2024 Minmin Zeng Innovative Doctoral Urban Research Award. In the spring of 2023. I presented an early version of this project in a public talk at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

I am currently working on a book project that expands on the dissertation. Broader in its historical and geographic scope, the book looks beyond WWII to understand the evolution of military mock villages through the postwar and early Cold War period until the end of the United States’ occupations of Korea and West Germany in the mid-1950s. In the near term, I have several other projects in the works. I am writing a review for Technology and Culture of Alexander Wood’s fascinating book on construction and labor histories of New York City at the turn of the 20th century. I will also be chairing a panel and presenting a paper at the 2025 Urban History Association Conference in Los Angeles on the topic of “forecasting destruction.” Lastly, with the support of The Graham Foundation, I am collaborating with Samira Daneshvar and the Harvard Film Archive to archive, preserve, and eventually screen the 1969 avant-garde film Shahr-e Ghesseh (City of Tales) by the Iranian filmmaker and playwright Bijan Mofid.

Previously, I was an Edmond J. Safra Fellow in Ethics at the Harvard University Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, a graduate affiliate of the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and a Harvard Horizons Fellow. I have taught history and design courses at Harvard, The Cooper Union, and The Pennsylvania State University, and I hold a master’s degree from each of these institutions. Prior to Harvard, I worked at several architecture and planning offices in New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. on projects that ranged from an exhibition led by artist Ann Hamilton to a design proposal for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. Most recently, from 2015 to 2019, I served as a research director in the New York office of Snøhetta, leading the firm’s post-occupancy research initiative and contributing as a writer and editor for books and publications, design proposals, and exhibitions.