About

Behind the Words

Mary N. Woods is the author of seminal works about architectural education and practice; and film, photography, and the built environment: Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi(2016); Beyond the Architect's Eye: Photographs of the American Built Environment (2013, 2009); and From Craft to Profession: Practice of Architecture in 19th-Century America (1999).

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In 1991 Woods became the first woman tenured in Cornell's architecture department, founded in 1871. She was the inaugural Michael McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory and received the Tau Sigma Delta Silver Medal for distinguished scholarship in 2018. Current projects include a documentary film on single-screen cinemas in India with director Vani Subramanian; an exhibition and catalog on Mumbai's architecture of the night with photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri; and a history of postindustrial ruins and urban renewal in New York City and Mumbai. Woods earned a B. A. from Duke University and Ph.D. from Columbia University.