PhD, History and American Studies, Indiana University;
MA, History, Indiana University;
BA, History and Political Theory, Washington University

Prof. Heathcott will be in London for the academic year 2010-2011.  

I study the American metropolis and its diverse cultures, institutions, and environments within a comparative and global perspective. My main interest is in the public role of scholarship and teaching, and the civic engagement of students and teachers in the world around them.

I grew up in a declining industrial city.  My neighborhood was wedged in between gas stations, liquor stores, train tracks, machine shops, trucking terminals, and a housing project.  From an early age I hopped empty freight trains to ride across town, and explored abandoned factories on my bicycle with friends.  These experiences left a deep impression on me, and led to an abiding interest in how cities are put together, and how they come apart.

I am a first-generation college student; since I was 14  years old, I have held jobs as a roofer, dishwasher, carpenter, fry cook, desk clerk, community organizer, teaching assistant, and professor.  I taught at Indiana University, Washington University, and Saint Louis University before joining the faculty at The New School.  In addition to my work as an educator, researcher, and writer, I also maintain an active curatorial practice.  

Over the years I have worked with many city agencies and non-profits devoted to historic preservation, affordable housing development, labor and tenants rights. I have been fortunate enough to be invited to many places to give lectures on issues ranging from public housing to industrial policy, neighborhood organizing, preservation, and urban design.  I have also contributed time and expertise as a project consultant, grant reviewer, and design studio critic at Washington University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University.

• The Everyday City: Architecture, Technology, and Landscape
• Urban Economies: Money, Power, and People
• Historic Preservation: Time, Space, and Design
• Senior Seminar in Urban Studies
• The Dynamic Metropolis
• Archive/City
  

"Infrastructure 2.0: A Stimulus Package for All of Us." National Civic Review 98, 2 (Summer 2010).

"Post-Industrial Urbanism as an Archival Project:  The Work of the Building Arts Foundation." With Pamela Ambrose. Art Documentation 28, 1 (2009).

"Block Signs." With Damon Rich. In Public Phenomena, ed. Temporary Services.  Chicago: Half Letter Press, 2008.

"The Street as a Transnational Space." On Site: Journal of Architecture and Culture 19, special issue on "Streets," Summer 2008.

"The City Quietly Remade: National Priorities and Local Agendas in the Movement to Clear the Slums." Special issue of the Journal of Urban History 34, 2 (January 2008).

"Reading the Accidental Archive: Architecture, Ephemera, and Landscape as Evidence of Urban Public Culture." Winterthur Portfolio 41, 2 (December 2007).

"Making Preservation Pay:  Historic tax credits generate big business, so why ruin a good thing?" Progressive Planning magazine (Summer 2007).

"The Value of Architecture: Bruce Lindsey brings the lessons of the Rural Studio to the big city." Metropolis magazine, May 2007.

"Score One for Modernism." Planning magazine (November 2006).

"The Century Building Debacle and the Future of Historic Preservation." The Next American City (October 2006).

"Curating the City: Challenges for Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century." Review essay commissioned by the Journal of Planning History 5, 1 (Winter 2006).

"'The Whole City is Our Laboratory': Harland Bartholomew and the Production of Urban Knowledge." Journal of Planning History 4, 4 (November 2005).

"Modeling the Urban Future: Maps, Charts, and the Fantasy of Postwar Growth." Planning Perspectives 20, 4 (October 2005).

"Urban Activism in a Downsizing World: Neighborhood Organizing in Post-Industrial Chicago." City and Community 4, 3 (Fall 2005).

"Black Archipelago: Politics and Civic Life in the Jim Crow City." Journal of Social History 38, 3 (March 2005).

"Corridors of Flight, Zones of Renewal: Planning and Policy in the Making of Metropolitan St. Louis, 1940-1980." With Maire Agnes Murphy. Journal of Urban History 31, 2 (January 2005).

"Urban Spaces and Working Class Expressions across the Black Atlantic." Radical History Review  87 (Fall 2003). 

"Steeples and Lines of Sight: Religion, Place, and Change in an Urban Neighborhood." In Hans Krabbendam and Derek Rubin, eds., Religion in America. European Contributions to American Studies (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2003).

Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization.  Edited with Jefferson Cowie. Cornell University Press, 2003.

By Appointment.

Contact: LangUrbanStudies@newschool.edu

• Twentieth Century Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism
• Comparative Urbanism and Civic Cultures
• History of City Planning
• Historic Preservation
• Visual and Material Culture of Cities
• Politics of Redevelopment and Urban Design

• Urban History Association
• Progressive Planners Network
• Society of Architectural Historians
• Society for City and Regional Planning History

• Columbia University Urban History Seminar
• School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin
• University of Pennsylvania, Institute of Urban Studies
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Royal Library, Brussels
• Chicago Historical Society
• College of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Massachusetts Historical Society
• University of Paris VII, Charles V Institute
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Columbia University, Buell Center for Study of American Architecture

• U.S. Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the United Kingdom
  
• U.S. Fulbright Senior Specialist Award
• Catherine Bauer Wurster Article Prize
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship
• Brown Center for the Humanities Visiting Fellowship
• American Studies Association International Programming Grant
• SAGES Visiting Faculty Fellow, Case Western Reserve University (declined)
• Erasmus Institute Fellowship (declined)
• John H. Edwards Dissertation Fellowship