Preeti Chopra

Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 5:30 to 6:15 p.m., by prior appointment.

Education
B.Arch. in Architecture, School of Architecture, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, India, 1987
M.L.A. Department of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
M.C.P. Department of City; Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
Ph.D. Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, 2003

Research Interests
Modern architectural and urban history, the spatial landscapes of empire, visual and spatial cultures and the history of South Asia, material culture, postcolonial theory and cultural studies.

Awards
Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize Winner (2022–23)

Publications

Chopra, Preeti. “Greetings from Bombay! Pictures of Colonial Complexity.” In Dr. Éléonore Muhidine ed., Indian Architecture in Postcards: A New Perspective on a Modern Heritage, 67-88. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023.

Chopra, Preeti. “Response to the ‘visual studies now’ questionnaire for Visual Studies.” Special issue of Visual Studies vol. 36, no. 3 (2021): 248-252. DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2021.1970394.

Chopra, Preeti. “Worthy Objects of Charity: The Colonial Government, Communities, and Charitable Institutions in Bombay.” In Bombay before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos, edited by Prashant Kidambi, Manjiri Kamat, and Rachel Dwyer, 171-193, and chapter notes, 364-367. London: C. Hurst & Co, 2019; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019; Oxford Scholarship Online (OSU), 2020; Penguin Random House India, 2019.

Chopra, Preeti. “The Asynchronous Everyday.” In section “Finding” in Platform: A digital forum for conversations about buildings, spaces, and landscapes. Posted on 5 August 2019. [invited].

“The West is the Best: World History of Architecture as Imperial Form of Knowledge,” in Narrating the Globe: The Emergence of World Histories of Architecture, edited by Petra Brouwer, Martin Bressani, and Christopher Drew Armstrong, 131–57 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023).

“South & South-East Asia,” in Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire, edited by G. A. Bremner, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, 278–317, plates 15, 16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

“The Poetics and Politics of Space: Art, Memory and Change in the Indian City,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 2, iss. 1 (2016):1–27. Special issue on “Asian Urbanisms and Urbanizations,” edited by Madhuri Desai and Shuang Shen.

“The Colonial Bombay Town Hall: Engaging the Function and Quality of Public Space, 1811–1918,” in City Halls and Civic Materialism: Towards a Global History of Urban Public Space, Architext series, edited by Swati Chattopadhyay and Jeremy White, 158–76 (London: Routledge, 2014).

“‘Where are you from?’ Belonging after Partition,” Tanqeed: a magazine of politics and culture 1, iss. V: Space (August 2013) [english translation]. Urdu translation: http://www.tanqeed.org/2013/08/journeys-to-ancestral-homeands-in-pakistan-and-india-urdu/

“Free to move, forced to flee: the formation and dissolution of suburbs in colonial Bombay,” Urban History 39, iss. 1 (2012):83–107.

“From part to the whole,” in Poppo Pingel, Auroville Architects Monograph Series, by Mona Doctor-Pingel, 165–68 (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2012).

A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

“Refiguring the Colonial City: Recovering the Role of Local Inhabitants in the Construction of Colonial Bombay,” Buildings and Landscapes 14 (Fall 2007):109–25.

“La Ville Imaginée: Nommer Les Divisions de Bombay Coloniale (1800–1918),” in Divisions de la ville, edited by Christian Topalov, 125–56 (Paris: Editions UNESCO: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’hommes [collection “Les Mots de la ville”], 2002).

“Pondicherry: A French Enclave in India,” in Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, edited by Nezar AlSayyad, 107–37 (Aldershot: Avebury/Gower House, 1992).

Chopra, Preeti. “Palimpsests of Colonial Bombay.” In The City as Oeuvre, the Oeuvre of the City, 30-41. Edited by Gyan Prakash. New Delhi: DAG Pvt Ltd, 2026. Catalogue published in conjunction with Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) exhibit “Bombay Framed: People, Memory, Metropolis” at DAG Gallery 2, Taj Mahal Palace, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai, 22 February – 11 April 2026.

Chopra, Preeti. Chapter 2, “The Stages of a Disobedient Bombay.” In Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay, 1930-1931. Edited by Avrati Bhatnagar & Sumathi Ramaswamy, 45-77. Ahmedabad: Mapin, published in association with the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi, 2025.

Chopra, Preeti. “The Grass is Green in the Streets of Pondicherry: Images of Dual Power, Cultural Entanglement and Blind Spots in an Indian City.” In Envisioning the Indian City: Spaces of Encounter in Goa, Calcutta, Pondicherry, and Chandigarh. Edited by Supriya Chaudhuri, Nandini Das, Iain Jackson, and Ian H. Magedera, 282-317. Kolkata, India: Jadavpur University Press, 2025. (ISBN Number: 978-81-967852-6-0).

Chopra, Preeti. “Making Room for a Statue: Spatial Politics, Networks, and Bombay’s Town Hall.” Journal of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute 78 (2024): 25-54. ISSN 0970 – 0609

Teaching
AH 103. Colonialism, Collaboration and Conflict: Architecture and Visual Culture in India (introductory)
AH 179. Passage Through India: South Asia’s Global Architectural Histories (introductory)
AH/LCA 379: Cities of Asia
AH/LCA 428: Visual Cultures of South Asia
AH/LCA 621: Mapping, Making, and Representing Colonial Spaces
AH 500/AH 800/DS 642: Taste
AH 500/800. India Looks East: Visual and Spatial Cultures of Asia
AH 802: Topics in Visual Cultures: The Everyday: Lives, Spaces, and Things
AH 800. Modern South Asia: Spatial and Visual Cultures and Histories