Program Director, Construction Management and Sustainable Practices
Emily Bills is an educator, curator, and author with research interests in urban history and social and environmental justice. She is Participating Adjunct Professor and Coordinator of the Urban Studies Program at 麻豆传媒集团. Professor Bills received her Ph.D. in the history of architecture and urbanism from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. Her work on telephone infrastructure and the development of Los Angeles received a Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award Citation of Special Recognition. She鈥檚 also received fellowship and grant support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Haynes Foundation, UCLA, and the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. She’s published articles in many journals and books, including Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America; Women and Things: Gendered Material Practices, 1750-1950; Engagement Party (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles); and Visual Merchandising: The Art of Selling. Curatorial projects include exhibitions on William F. Cody, H茅l猫ne Binet, Pedro E. Guerrero, Catherine Opie, and Richard Barnes, among others.
Emily鈥檚 book聽California Captured: Marvin Rand Mid-Century Modern Architecture (Phaidon, 2018), co-authored with Sam Lubell and Pierluigi Serraino, won the Regional Bookseller鈥檚 Award for Best Art Book of 2018 and was listed as a notable book of 2018 by Los Angeles Magazine and Curbed Los Angeles. Her second book on architectural photography,聽Wayne Thom: Photographing the Late Modern,聽was published by聽Monacelli Press (2020). Her next project,聽Telephone City: How Telecommunications Helped Build Los Angeles,聽is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Ph.D., History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University,
B.A. Art History, University of California, Berkeley