History and theory 123something to return to, and a-theoretical historians some-
thing to cling to.
We are, of course, presenting a complex and often subtle
set of negotiations over defi nitions, methods and ambitions
as a series of somewhat crude camps. Many examples that
come to mind undermine them, but they do serve to isolate
some of the tendencies of this time. The historical moment
of theory, like all those distinguishable episodes of architec-
tural historiography preceding it, was given a different
expression by different linguistic groups and national and
regional debates in the fi eld. For all the differences we might
invoke, however, it had a ‘shared intellectual attitude or
deportment’.^12 The most dominant discourse of the last
quarter of the twentieth century, which informed that ‘atti-
tude or deportment’ more thoroughly than any other, was
staged on the northeast coast of the United States, in and
around ‘theory’s natural home: the American humanities
graduate school’.^13 During the 1970s, this setting opened a
door to America’s graduate schools of architecture, which
decisively shaped the direction of theory production from
that time onwards. For its infl uence over the recent directions
of architectural history, this institutional history deserves our
brief attention.
Institutional corollaries
The introduction of the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree
in American schools of architecture was an important step
in architecture’s participation in the theory moment. The fi rst
American Ph.D. programmes in architecture were developed
by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cali-
fornia–Berkeley. The formation in 1975 of the Ph.D. in the
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology – within America’s
oldest university school of architecture – signalled a change
to this institutional landscape. Under the guidance of Stan-
ford Anderson and Henry A. Millon, architecture faculty and
graduate students alike sought to intellectualize architecture
and its history on terms that ensured the full participation of
architecture in the wider development of the critical humani-
ties.^14 Before this moment in the United States, graduate