Dell Upton
Dell Thayer Upton is an architectural historian. He is chair of the Department of Art History at University of California, Los Angeles, and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley. He previously has taught at the University of Virginia.
Upton studied history and English as an undergraduate at Colgate University.
He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown University.
He taught for many years at UC Berkeley, before moving in 2002 to the University of Virginia, where he was David A. Harrison Professor of Anthropology and Architecture, with appointments in the School of Architecture and the department of anthropology. He now teaches at University of California, Los Angeles as Professor of Architectural History and is chair of the Department of Art History.
Upton authored the 1998 textbook, Architecture in the United States for the Oxford University Press' Oxford Art History series. Upton has written extensively on vernacular landscapes of the American built environment. His work on Colonial and Antebellum American include: Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia, Madaline: Love and Survival in Antebellum New Orleans, and America’s Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups That Built America. As a founding member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Upton has published on materialist history and theory as separate from canonical architectural histories. Works such as Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, with John Michael Vlach and "Architecture History or Landscape History?" in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. He wrote the chief essay for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861" in 2000.Awards
