Adam Longenbach, PhD

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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 educator currently serving as the Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Democracy and Landscape at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. My research and teaching spans nineteenth and twentieth century histories of the United States and “the U.S. in the world,” with specific interests in urban and environmental history, history of technology, and history of American visual culture, particularly where these histories intersect with legacies of U.S. war and empire (I also enjoy researching and writing about the history of New York City, where I lived and worked for many years before beginning my doctoral studies at Harvard University).

These topics come together in my current book project: Stagecraft / Statecraft: The Military “Mock Village” and the Fabrication of U.S. Empire, 1941-1955. Building on my dissertation as well as ideas I first explored in a 2017 essay for The Avery Review, the book examines the mid-twentieth century rise of “mock villages”: full-scale imitations of U.S. domestic and foreign cities, constructed by Army and Hollywood professionals, for the purpose of simulating experimental warfare operations. The book shows how these replica environments served as veritable “theaters of war” for U.S. military and government decision makers to manifest and perform fantasies of domination, influence, and control. Among others, this research has been supported by a Carter Manny Citation of Special Recognition from The Graham Foundation, an Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Ethics at the Harvard University Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, and a grant from the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. I presented an early version of this project several years ago in a public talk at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

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 new 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.

If you have questions or are interested in collaborating, please reach out to me via the email link in the top left corner of this page.