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RSID - Cameron Macdonell

Cameron Macdonell

Assistant Professor
EducationBA (Hons.), MA, PhD

Visit Cameron Macdonell's website (external link, opens in new window) 

Cameron Macdonell is a historian of art, architecture, and interior design. He focuses on the construction of meaning through iconographical, phenomenological, and psychological approaches to interiority, especially the narratology of textual environments and the ritualization of built environments. His first book, Ghost Storeys (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), unfolds a narrative of physiological and psychological trauma in the highly ritualized spaces of a Gothic Revival church, contextualizing the architect’s Gothic literature to present revivalist architecture as the phantom limb pain of an irrecuperable past. Cameron’s current book project, “Haunted Houses: Citing/Siting/Sighting the Ghost in British and American Architecture, ca. 1660 and Beyond,” traces the ghost as a metaphysical and metaphorical figure (of speech) haunting the autobiographical interiors of houses architects design for themselves. And his next major research project explores the afterlives of artifacts (from discrete objets d’art to reclaimed materials) within the interior designs of Canadian houses.

Cameron received an honours BA in art history from the University of Windsor, winning the Board of Governors Medal for the School of Visual Arts. He received an MA in Canadian art history from York University, where his SSHRC-funded research earned him a nomination for the Governor General’s Gold Medal. He received his PhD in the history and theory of architecture at McGill University, where his SSHRC-funded dissertation was awarded the King Student Medal from the ARCC. He has also worked as a postdoctoral assistant at ETH Zürich, as a research associate with McGill University’s school of architecture, and as a copyeditor for book and journal projects, including several issues of the Journal of Architectural Education.

  • History
  • Visual/Textual Culture
  • Media Culture
  • Game Design

Books

  • Macdonell, Cameron. Ghost Storeys: Ralph Adams Cram, Modern Gothic Media, and Deconstructive Microhistory at a Canadian Church. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017.

Book Chapters

  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Upkeep and the Ghost in the Machine: Bataille Bursts Banham’s Bubble.” In Interior Provocations: Upkeep, 19 pp. Routledge, Forthcoming. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Through the Looking Glass, Beyond the Uncanny Valley: Reflecting on the Interiority of Ex Machina.” In Intense Interiors: 2023 Architecture + Film Symposium, Toronto Metropolitan University, 55–62. Architecture + Film Symposium, 2023.
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Do You Hear the People Sing?” In Architectural Ethnography, 140–43. TOTO, 2018.
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Postmodernism Is Almost All Right: Polish Architecture After Socialist Globalisation.” In Architectural Ethnography, 44–47. TOTO, 2018. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Refugee Republic.” In Architectural Ethnography, 144–47. TOTO, 2018. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Rogue Economies, vol. 1: Revelations and Revolutions.” In Architectural Ethnography, 36–39. TOTO, 2018. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Valparãso Público.” In Architectural Ethnography, 56–59. TOTO, 2018. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Gothic Historiography: An Interdisciplinary Speculation.” In The Companion to the History of Architecture, Volume III: Nineteenth-Century Architecture, 131–46. Wiley, 2017. 
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “The American Pugins: Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Goodhue.” In Gothic Revival Worldwide: A. W. N. Pugin’s Global Influence, 94–105. KADOC, 2016.

Journal Articles

  • Macdonell, Cameron, and John Sicat. “Ghost Written: The Winchester House as Cinematic Trans-Mediation.” idea journal 19, no. 1 (2022): 128–37.
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Garrison Gothic: Timber Con(I)fers the Anglo-Canadian Subject.” Architectural Theory Review 25, no. 1–2 (2021): 165–79. 
  • Adams, Annmarie, and Cameron Macdonell. “Making Himself at Home: Cormier, Trudeau, and the Architecture of Domestic Masculinity.” Winterthur Portfolio 50, no. 2–3 (2016): 151–89.
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “Humouring the Humours: An Introduction to the Comedic Gothic of Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Goodhue in the United States and Canada.” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 37, no. 2 (2012): 13–29. 
  • Bressani, Martin, and Cameron Macdonell. “Remedies External and Visible: Pugin’s Health and Pugin’s Gothic.” True Principles: Journal of the Pugin Society 4, no. 2 (2010–11): 122–33.
  • Macdonell, Cameron. “‘If You Want To, You Can Cure Me’: Duplicity and the Edwardian Patron.” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 31, no. 2 (2006): 23–36.

Media

  • Macdonell, Cameron, dir. Melencolia XII. In production.
  • Macdonell, Cameron, Shuning Xie, and Slyfox Web Design. Ghost-Storeys.com. 2024.