Obituary: Bonnie MacDougall, Cornell University

Dec 1, 2017 by Staff

Bonnie Graham MacDougall '62, M.A. '65, Ph.D. '73, professor emerita of architecture, died on November 26 while visiting family in Virginia. She was 76.

A graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, MacDougall joined the architecture faculty in AAP as a visiting assistant professor in 1979 and was associate professor of architecture and Asian studies from 1988 until her retirement in 2014.

She made numerous contributions to AAP, the South Asia Program, and to the study of Sri Lanka and greater South Asia.

A cultural and architectural historian with teaching experience in anthropology and linguistics, she received a Senior Fulbright Hays Award in 1979 to lecture in anthropology at the University of Sri Lanka, and another Fulbright award to conduct research there in 2012.

At Cornell, she taught graduate and undergraduate classes on architecture, culture, and society, and specialized classes on the architectures of South Asia.

"Bonnie was interested in bringing an understanding of architecture to the rest of the university, having taught the Introduction to Architecture course for up to 1,000 nonmajors, and in bringing an understanding of international cultures to architecture students," said close friend Medina Lasansky, the Michael A. McCarthy Associate Professor of Architectural Theory.

Read entire obituary here.