Adam Longenbach, Ph.D.

LinkedIn / Academia.edu / Email

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

I am a historian and educator currently serving as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Democracy and Landscape at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. My research interests draw together histories of design and construction, media, and visual and material culture to examine the role of the built environment in US practices of empire building and propaganda making. While I currently focus on intersections of military construction and stagecraft in the mid-twentieth century United States, my broader scholarship encompasses environmental histories of technology, labor, and the body since the rise of mechanization and motion pictures in the late-nineteenth century.

I chose to pursue my doctorate after nearly a decade in professional design and research practice, an experience that continues to shape my methods as a scholar. Questions of US culture, media technology, and empire were already embedded in the projects I engaged as a practitioner, which ranged from the National September 11th Memorial Museum and the Barack Obama Presidential Library to new master plans for Times Square and the Ford Motor Company. Drawing on my training as both an architect and a historian, my method combines archival research with architectural analysis. I study texts, films, and photographs alongside construction drawings, materials, and specifications, using these sources to illuminate contradictions between the rhetoric and on-the-ground practices of US institutions.

I am exploring this method in my current book project, War and Stagecraft: Hollywood and the Rise of the Military Mock Village, 1941-1953. The book tells the story of how and why US institutions like the US Army began constructing full-scale imitations of built environments amid the wartime culture of the mid-twentieth century United States, and questions why they continue to do so. In addition to Dumbarton Oaks and the Mellon Foundation, 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 will be presenting a selection of this research at the 2027 meeting of the American Historical Association in New Orleans, LA.

In the meantime, I have several other projects in the works. With the support of the Mellon Democracy and Landscape Initiative, I am developing a second book project that looks at the material histories, militarized labor, and extractive landscapes of early US aviation during the two world wars. I am also collaborating with Samira Daneshvar and the Harvard Film Archive to archive, preserve, and screen the 1969 avant-garde film Shahr-e Ghesseh (City of Tales) by the Iranian filmmaker and playwright Bijan Mofid. This project continues to be supported by the Graham Foundation.

Outside academia, I can usually be found running, exercising, fishing, or otherwise enjoying time in Rock Creek Park, where I serve as a member of the Rock Creek Conservancy. I am also continually on the lookout for excuses to restore furniture and propagate plants. If you have questions or are interested in collaborating on a project, conference panel, etc., please contact me via the email link in the top left corner of this page.