Courtney Lesoon

Courtney Lesoon is a historian of Islamic art, architecture, and urbanism. Her research on the early and medieval Islamic world engages closely with primary sources to address Islamic visual and built culture from an Islamic perspective. Her current book project, Knowledge and the City, explores how early Islamic thinkers conceived of and theorized urbanism. As a pedagogue, Courtney is interested in how the study of the premodern and non-Western world encourages students to become more flexible and agile thinkers.

• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• MA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• BA, College of the Holy Cross

• ARTH 1S (Freshman Seminar): Cities of the Premodern World
• ARTH 201 Ancient to Medieval Architecture
• ARTH 280 The Secret Lives of Things

• 2025–2026: Macaulay Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Art of the Islamic World at Smarthistory
• 2022–2023: Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education
• 2021: Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize in Islamic Art and Culture, awarded by the Historians of Islamic Art Association
• 2021–2022: Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship
• 2018: AKPIA Travel Grant, awarded by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT
• 2014–2015: Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) – academic year, for Advanced Persian language study and Area Studies coursework, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education
• 2014: Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) – summer for Intermediate Persian language study at the University of Wisconsin, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, administered by the University of Michigan
• 2012–2013: Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Research Grant (Sharjah, UAE), awarded by the U.S. Department of State
• 2012: Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) for Arabic language study at the Qasid Institute (Amman, Jordan), awarded by the U.S. Department of State

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “Independent and/or Instrumentalized: Surveying Mosque Architecture in Chile (1986–2006).” (link) In Islamic and Islamicate Architecture in the Americas: Transregional Dialogues and Manifestations, edited by Caroline ‘Olivia’ Wolf. Intellect Books, 2025.
• “The Sphero-conical as Apothecary Vessel: An Argument for Dedicated Use." (link) Muqarnas 39 (2022): 317-331.

Edited Volumes in Progress

• Courtney Lesoon, ed., Critical Historiography as Method: Essays in Honor of Nasser Rabbat (Festschrift)

Journal Articles in Progress

• “Old Walls and New Nations: The ‘Syria Lebanon Room’ at the University of Pittsburgh”
• “Excavating an Early Islamic Model of Urbanism: the city and its learners, according to al-Fārābī”

Monographs in Progress

• Knowledge and the City: Redefining Islamic Urbanism, 762–1067

• American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA), exp. 12/31/2026
• College Art Association (CAA), 12/31/2027
• Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA), exp. 12/31/2026
• Middle East Medievalists (MEM), exp. 06/30/2027
• Middle East Studies Association (MESA), exp. 12/31/2026
• Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), exp. 12/31/2026