Nicola Tullio Pezolet, PhD

Education

• PhD (2013) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (MIT School of Architecture and Planning: History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art)
  
• MA (2008) Université Laval, Québec (Département des sciences historiques: Histoire de l'art)
• BA (2005) Université Laval, Québec (Département des sciences historiques: Histoire de l'art)

Academic Appointments

• Concordia University, Montreal: Faculty of Fine Arts / Department of Art History (Assistant Professor, 2013-18, Associate Professor, 2018-present & Graduate Program Director, 2020-23)
• Northeastern University, Boston: College of Arts, Media and Design / School of Architecture (Adjunct Faculty/Full-Time Lecturer of Architecture History and Theory, 2012-13)

Research & Teaching Interests

• History and Theories of Architecture and the Built Environment in Europe and North America (19th-20th Century)
• Modernism, Public Space and the 'Synthesis of the Arts'
• Critical Historiography and Social History of Art
• Cold War Cultural Politics
• Christian Architecture, Art and Liturgy
• Theological Aesthetics
• Utopian Thought
• Print Culture

Distinctions & Awards

2024

• Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky for Studies in Canadian Art collaboration grant

• Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky for Studies in Canadian Art collaboration grant

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Development Grant (2016-2018)
• Christopher Jackson Teaching Award, Department of Art History, Concordia University
• Concordia University, Aid to Research-Related Events

• Fonds de Recherche Société et Culture du Québec, Établissement de nouveaux professeurs-chercheurs (2014-2017)
• Concordia University Undergraduate Student Research Award (supervisor)

• Concordia University Faculty Research and Development Program Award

• Social Science Research Council, International Dissertation Research Fellowship (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), residency at the Maison des Étudiants Canadiens / Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (Paris, 2011-2012)

• Canadian Centre for Architecture collection research grant (Montreal, 2009)
  

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship (Cambridge, 2007- 2011)
• Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture doctoral scholarship (2007- 2011) (declined)
• MIT presidential fellowship (Cambridge, 2007-2008)

• Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture master's scholarship (2006-2007)
• Centre Interuniversitaire d'Études sur les Lettres, les Arts et les Traditions (CELAT) travel grant (Vancouver, 2006)
  

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada master's scholarship (Quebec/Montreal, 2005- 2006)
• Canada Millennium scholarship (Quebec, 2005)

Professional Memberships & Research Teams

• Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada
• Universities Art Association of Canada
• Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art
• Les lieux des savoirs photographiques: Archives, ateliers, récits, réseaux (FRQSC)
• Material Religion Initiative (Concordia/Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture)
  

Undergraduate Courses

• ARTH 270 Icons of Architectural History
• ARTH 283 The Life and Work of Le Corbusier
  
• ARTH 362 Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and Architecture
• ARTH 371 Studies in Canadian Architecture 
• ARTH 374 Architecture and Urbanism in Montreal
• ARTH 400 Architecture and the "Synthesis of the Arts" (advanced seminar)
  
• ARTH 450 Architecture and Utopia (advanced seminar)
  

Graduate Seminars

• ARTH 633 Image Building: Art, Architecture, and Print Media
• ARTH 633 Of Utopian Space
  
• ARTH 639 The Cold War: Art, Architecture, and Global Politics (1945-1989)
• ARTH 639 Architectural History, Theory and Criticism: Construction Paper
• ARTH 667 Art History, Religion and Spirituality: The Christian Imagination
  
• ARTH 655 Art History MA Thesis Seminar
• ARTH 810 Art History and its Methodologies/Séminaire Intégrateur (Interuniversity Art History PhD program, co-taught w/ Dr. Christina Contandriopoulos, UQÀM)
  
• ARTH 804 The Utopian Imagination in Art and Architecture / L’imaginaire utopique en art et architecture (Interuniversity Art History PhD program)

Graduate Students

MA in Art History

Current Research

Books

Reconstruction and the Synthesis of the Arts in France, 1944-1962 (Abingdon, Oxon/New York, NY: Routledge/Ashgate Studies in Architecture, 2018).

Books Edited

Sites of Photographic Knowledge: The Book, co-editor with Eduardo Ralickas (Montreal: Artexte, 2022).

Volumes Edited

(assistant editor) Thresholds 41: Revolution! (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT School of Architecture and Planning, 2013).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• "From Automatisme to Automation: Jean-Paul Mousseau's 1962 Lumino-Kinetic Mural for Hydro-Québec," Journal of Canadian Art History / Annales d'histoire de l'art Canadien, vol. 37, no. 2/vol. 38, no.1  (2016/2017): 100-131. [Published in 2022.]
• "God and his World: The Architecture of the Christian Pavilion at Expo 67," Research Notebooks/Laboratoire d'Étude de l'Architecture Potentielle, no. 3 (2019): 104-111.
• "Art in Transnational Architecture: Paul F. Damaz’s Popularization of the Synthesis of the Arts, Between Europe and Latin America," special issue on Contemporary Latino and Latin American Art, ed. Olga U. Herrera and María C. Gaztambide, Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal (University of Texas Press/Center for Latino Research, Chicago), vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 21-36.
  
• "Etienne Gaboury, Vatican II and Catholic Liturgical Renewal in Postwar Canada," special issue Apocryphal and Apostolic Modernism: Connections between Religion and Architectural  Modernism, 1945-1970, ed. Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons, The European Legacy (Routledge), vol. 22, no. 3 (Winter 2017): 293-317.
  
• “Spiritual Matter: Universal And Regional Forms In Étienne Gaboury’s Précieux-Sang Church,” special issue Kingdoms of God, Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism, no. 2 (December 2015): 90-101.
  
• "Bauhaus Ideas: Jorn, Max Bill and Reconstruction Culture," October (The MIT Press), no. 141 (Summer 2012): 86-110.
• "Primitivism, Humanism, and Ambivalence: Cobra and Post-Cobra," Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics (Harvard University Press), no. 59-60 (Spring/Autumn 2011): 282-302. Co-authored with Karen Kurczynski, University of Massachusetts (Amherst).
• "The Cavern of Anti-Matter: Giuseppe Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International," Grey Room (The MIT Press), no. 38 (March 2010): 62-89.
• "Signs of Inhabitation: The Critical Legacies of Patio and Pavilion," Thresholds (MIT School of Architecture), no. 35 (Spring 2009): 44-49.

Book Chapters / Exhibition Catalogue Essays

• "Dionysus in the Democracy: Jorn Contra Le Corbusier," in What Moves Us? Le Corbusier and Asger Jorn in Art and Architecture, ed. Ruth Baumeister (Zurich/Silkeborg: Scheidegger and Spiess/Museum Jorn, 2015), 76-81. Translated in Danish as "Dionysos i demokratiet: Jorn Contra Le Corbusier".
• "'Le Peintre Asgaer', the Popular Front and the Synthesis of the Arts," in Expo Jorn: Art is a Festival, ed. Karen Kurczynski (Silkeborg: Museum Jorn, 2014), 168-171. Translated in Danish as "'Maleren Asgaer', Folkefronten og syntesen af kunstarterne".

Online Publication

"The Village Polychrome, 1952-53," Canadian Centre for Architecture website, December 2009.

Book and Exhibition Reviews

• "The Social Project: Housing Postwar France, by Kenny Cupers (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 76, no. 1 (March 2017): 115-117.
• "The SAAL Process: Housing in Portugal, 1974–76, exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2 May to 4 October 2015)," Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 70, no. 1 (2016): 180-181.
• "The Allied Arts: Architecture and Craft in Postwar Canada, by Sandra Alfoldy (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012)," RACAR, vol. 40, no. 2 (2015): 161-163.
• "On Architecture: Melvin Charney - A Critical Anthology, ed. Louis Martin (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013)," Future Anterior, vol. 9, no. 1 (2014): 99-105.

Conferences & Lectures

• “’The World Around Us’: Photography and the Humanistic Theology of the Christian Pavilion at Expo 67,” panel Photographic Narrative and Counter-Narrative in Architectural Histories, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada conference, Halifax, May 31, 2019
• "La Construction des Églises: Réflexions sur le Directoire Pastoral de la Commission Diocésaine de Liturgie de Montréal (1965)," (Re)connaissance de l’architecture religieuse au Québec, journée d'étude du CELAT, Université Laval, Québec, April 18, 2019

• "Terre Nouvelle: Modernism, Humanistic Theology and the Didactic Publications of the Centre d'Animation Pastorale at Expo 67," Laboratoire d'Étude de l'Architecture Potentielle (LEAP), Montreal, April 7, 2018
  
• "Lumino-Kineticism and the Postwar Years," Centre for Expanded Poetics, Concordia University, Montreal, January 26, 2018
  

• "Plastique armé: À propos des vitraux et fresques lumineuses de Jean-Paul Mousseau," panel Art sacré et avant-garde: De l’art religieux à l’art civique, Expo 67 et les métiers d'art colloquium, Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, Montreal, October 22, 2017
• "Secular and Sacred Light in the Work of Jean-Paul Mousseau," panel Craft and Public Art, Canadian Craft Biennial conference, OCADU, Toronto, September 16, 2017
• "St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish at 100 (1917-2017)," panel Religious Architecture in Canada, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada conference, Niagara-on-the-Lake, May 26, 2017
• "Le Corbusier: Architecture, Art et Politique Modernes," undergraduate course HAR 1425: L’architecture depuis les Lumières (1750-1950) (Prof. Christina Contandriopoulos), Départment d'histoire de l'art, Université du Québec à Montréal, April 4, 2017

• Panel "Utopia, Territory and Media Cultures / Utopie, Territoire et Cultures Médiatiques," Universities Art Association of Canada conference, Université du Québec à Montréal, October 27-30, 2016 (co-chair with Dr. Christina Contandriopoulos)
• "Paul Damaz’ Transatlantic Network and the Historiography of Midcentury Modernism," Networked Art Histories, 1960s to the Present Day (in Canada and Elsewhere) conference, Department of Art History, Concordia University, October 22, 2016
• "Hydro-Quebec and the Cultural Legacies of the 'Quiet Revolution': On Photography and the Restoration of Jean-Paul Mousseau’s Lumière et mouvement dans la couleur (1962-2002)," panel What does Photography Preserve? Reification and Ruin in the Photographic Heritage of a Place Called Montreal, Association of Critical Heritage Studies conference, Université du Québec à Montréal, June 7-10, 2016
• "The Spirit of the Matter: Materiality and Metamorphosis in the Early Work of Étienne Gaboury," panel Churches: Past, Present, and Future, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada annual conference, Regina, Saskatchewan, June 1-4, 2016
• "Le Corbusier: Architecture, Art et Politique Modernes," undergraduate course HAR 1425: L’architecture depuis les Lumières (1750-1950) (Prof. Christina Contandriopoulos), Département d'histoire de l'art, Université du Québec à Montréal, April 4, 2016
• "The Spirit of the Matter: Materiality and Metamorphosis in the Early Work of Étienne Gaboury," conference The Sacred and the Profane, CUJAH, Concordia University, February 13, 2016
• "Colorful Montreal: Modern Architecture, Urban Life, and the 1960s Abstract Murals of Jean-Paul Mousseau," panel Geometric Abstraction, Op, and Kinetic Art in Transnational Perspective, College Art Association annual conference, Washington DC, February 4, 2016
  

• "'La Culture Humaine': Utopianism, Teleology and Synthesis in Jorn’s Theories of Art and Architecture of the 1940s," Le Corbusier: What Moves Us? conference, Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark, 19 November, 2015
  
• "French Modern Architecture and Cold War Diplomacy, circa 1950," panel Reassessing the Cold War in Architecture and Planning, Society of Architectural Historians annual conference, Chicago, April 17, 2015
• "Art et mobilier modernes à l’ère industrielle," Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, March 2, 2015
• "Modern Art and Furniture Design in the First Machine Age," Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, March 2, 2015
• "Edgar Pillet, Abstract Art and the Postwar Catholic Left: The Mame Factories in Tours," Forum des Professeurs, Département des sciences historiques, Université Laval, Québec, January 30, 2015

• "Photography and the Documentation of Modernist Church Architecture in Canada," panel The Arc of Photographic Knowledge: From Representation to Experience, Universities Art Association of Canada, OCAD University, Toronto, October 23-26, 2014
• "Le Corbusier et la 'synthèse des arts majeurs' comme fiction architecturale," doctoral seminar HAR 8001: La structure fictionnelle de l'œuvre architecturale (Prof. Marc Grignon), Département d'histoire de l'art, Université du Québec à Montréal, October 17, 2014
  
• "Art and the Urban Environment, 1950s-1960s," undergraduate course ARTH 375: Issues in the Montreal Art Milieu (Prof. Johanne Sloan), Department of Art History, Concordia University, September 24, 2014
• "Modernism and Catholic Architecture, Before and After Vatican II,” panel Apocryphal and Apostolic Modernism: Forgotten Connections Between Religion and Architecture, International Society for Intellectual History annual conference, University of Toronto, June 27, 2014
  
• "The Spaces of Religion and Identity," Afternoons at the Institute, Conversation with Dr. Tania Martin, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, February 5, 2014
• "Art on the Assembly Line," colloquium BOOM! Growth, Form, Sustainable Bodies 1950-1967, University City London, London (UK), April 5, 2014

• "The Postwar Territorialization of Neo-Plasticism," panel Referential Meaning in Abstraction, Universities Art Association of Canada, Banff Centre, October 19, 2013
• "Couleur dans l'espace: Art mural, abstraction, biopolitique," followed by a public conversation with Dr. Yve-Alain Bois, Dr. Jaleh Mansoor and Melanie Gilligan, International Colloquium Max et Iris Stern 7, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, October 6, 2013
• "Polychrome Architecture: Groupe Espace and the Renault Industrial Complex in Flins," Department of Architecture, MIT, April 2013

• "Jorn, Second Futurism and the Italian Neo-Avant-Garde," Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark, March 11, 2012

• "Rational/Irrational Production: The Bauhaus Idea," Department of Architecture, MIT, April 17, 2011
• "Giuseppe Gallizio et la synthèse des arts: Entre utopie technologique et nostalgie préhistorique," Colloquium Les Apories de l'Art Total, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, France, December 15-17, 2011

• "Modernist Polychromy in France," Department of Architecture, MIT, March 10, 2009
• Research in Progress 2009, School of Architecture and Planning, MIT, March 13-14, 2009 (organizing committee member)
• "Primitives of a New Sensibility: Futurism, Popular Art and the European Neo-Avant- Garde," International symposium Futurism at 100: To Measure a Century, Harvard University, April 16-17 2009
• "Design, Education and Nueva Vision: On Tomás Maldonado, Max Bill and the 'Bauhaus Idea' at Mid-Century," Annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 29, 2009
• "Hopes in Design: Tomás Maldonado's 'Scientific Operationalism' and the Architectural Culture of the Postwar Years," Study Centre lecture series, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, July 24, 2009
• "The Cavern of Anti-Matter: The Techno-Primitivist Imaginary of the Situationist International, circa 1959," Universities Art Association of Canada, University of Alberta, October 23, 2009

• "Signs of Inhabitation: Patio and Pavilion, London, 1956," Graduate colloquium Research in Progress, School of Architecture and Planning, MIT, April 5, 2008
• "Surrealism and Situationism's Cartographic Practices," Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, April 15, 2008
• "Partez sur les Routes: Situationist Nomadism and the Anxious Legacies of Surrealism," Symposium Anxious Mobilities, School of Architecture, Yale University, April 12, 2008
• "Le nomadisme et son rôle critique dans les publications architecturales d'après-guerre," International conference Bohemia Without Borders: The Production and Internationalization of a Literary Attitude, University of Toronto, 12 December, 2008
  

• "Guy Debord and the Art of Cartography," French and Italian Department, Stanford University, November 13, 2007