Field of interest: Biodesign, History and Theory of Architecture, Design and Science

Research 

After finishing her second book Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design (2019), she is now researching and teaching facets of biodesign theory and practice. Since 2018, she has prepared student teams from UC Davis to compete in the Biodesign Challenge Competition. She works with living materials to teach students to think differently about design practice, life cycle analysis, and sustainability. 

Publications and Work

She is the author of Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design, on generative architecture and design in relation to recent scientific theories of self-organization and emergence, development and evolution, and complex adaptive systems (University of Minnesota Press, January 2019); Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (2010/2004), winner of the 2006 Edelstein Prize for outstanding book on the history of technology; and co-editor of the anthology Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (2006).

Her work is included in the anthologies

• Now, Next: Designs for Different Futures (2019)
• Routledge Handbook of Biology in Art and Architecture (2016)
• Politics of Parametricism (2015)
• Keywords in Disability Studies (2015)
• Visual Culture and Evolution (2011)
• I Have Seen the Future – Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (2012)
• Art, Sex, and Eugenics (2008)

Her work is published in the journals

• Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
• Technoetic Arts
• American Art,
• Boom: A Journal of California
• Design and Culture
• American Quarterly
• Volume
• Design Issues

Teaching

Christina Cogdell is Professor of Design, specializing in history, theory and criticism, and a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California at Davis.

At UC Davis, she teaches interdisciplinary classes in Design history/ theory/criticism, Biodesign, Art History, Cultural Studies, and American Studies.
These include seminars on:

• “Biodesign Challenge Course: Biodesign Theory and Practice” (DES 128A & DES 128B, Winter and Spring quarters each year)

Her large undergraduate lecture courses are:

• “Energy, Materials and Design across Time” (DES 40A) 
• “The History of American Architecture” (AHI 188B)

She previously has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, College of Santa Fe, and California State University – Fullerton.

Curriculum Vitae

CURRICULUM VITAE

Christina G. Cogdell

 

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

 

Department of Design                         

University of California at Davis                    

One Shields Avenue                                       

Davis, California 95616                                  

Email: cgcogdell@ucdavis.edu

Email: christina.cogdell@gmail.com

Cell: (505) 670-6107

Web: https://arts.ucdavis.edu/faculty-profile/christina-cogdell

 

 

CURRENT ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

 

Chair, Department of Design, University of California, Davis

Professor, Department of Design, University of California, Davis

 

EDUCATION

Postdoctoral Study with Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship (June 2011-August 2012): Summer 2011 studying architectural software at UC Berkeley; Fall 2011 in Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) program at the Architectural Association, London; Winter and Spring 2012 studying Physics, Evolutionary Biology and Self-Organization, and Philosophy of Science at UC Davis; Two independent studies in the history and philosophy of science with Evelyn Fox Keller (MIT emeritus, Fall 2013) and Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv University, Summer 2012).

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin (2001), Art History

M.A., University of Notre Dame (1994), American Studies with Highest Honors

B.A., University of Texas at Austin (1991), American Studies with Highest Honors

 

 

ADMINISTRATIVE AND RELEVANT COMMITTEE EXPERIENCE

 

Chair, Department of Design, University of California, Davis, (June 2017-present)

The Department of Design includes an undergraduate program (B.A.), a graduate (M.F.A.) program, the Design Museum and Collection, and the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC), which plays a leading influence on the State of California’s energy efficiency policies (https://cltc.ucdavis.edu/). We are the only comprehensive design department in the UC system, with all major design subdisciplines except architecture. We have 16 ladder faculty, 7 continuing lecturers, 18 lecturers, 4 staff positions, 20 graduate students, almost 800 undergraduate majors. This year I am teaching 1096 student credit hours; even though I receive one course release per year for being Department Chair, I have taught as overload for the last three years two additional courses per year to prepare students for the Biodesign Challenge competition. The Chair is responsible for all aspects of program operations and works in close collaboration with the Chief Administrative Officer of the Arts Group on the budget and the academic personnel staff under the Associate Dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and the Dean of the College of Letters and Science. Major accomplishments: During my time as Chair, our undergraduate majors have grown from around 500 to almost 800 students, entailing significant increase in courses, lecturer positions, and a successful search for a new faculty member. The two faculty who led the CLTC have retired and we are searching for a new Director (who will also be a faculty member). While we removed tracks in our major before I became Chair in order to foster the training of more interdisciplinary designers, I have worked with faculty and advisors to increase clarity for students of their curricular options through our program. I have worked with faculty and lecturers to expand inclusion of nonwestern design and nonwhite designers in course content in order to move forward the decolonization of design. I oversee our mentoring program for junior faculty, and I am responsible for hiring all of our lecturers each year. We are under construction on a $17.1 million renovation of our building, which will almost triple our current critique and maker space when finished; we will share part of this renovated area with the Department of Cinema and Digital Media beginning in 2021. With the Letters and Science Development team, we brought in an estate gift worth $3.8 million for the Design Museum and Collection and a $250,000 starter gift for furniture and equipment for the new maker spaces in Cruess Hall Phase II.

 

Chair of the MFA Program, Department of Design, University of California, Davis, (Fall 2013-June 2017)

Our MFA program started in 2009 with only a few students per year. While I was chair, the university offered a masters growth incentive program; by participating and increasing our students from 5 to 17, I grew the graduate budget by $60,000 per year. I oversaw the graduate curriculum, MFA committee, admissions, funding, and TA assignments (discussion sections with lecture courses and studio TA positions). The Dean’s office increased studio TA funding two- to three-fold during my leadership. During this time, I also increased the diversity of our graduate student body from 50%-50% white/Asian American (100% domestic) to 32% white domestic, 16% Asian American, and 53% international (China, Iran, S. Korea, India, and Saudi Arabia).

Member of College of Letters and Science Faculty Executive Committee, College of Letters and Science (Fall 2015 – present; college reorganized under one Dean in March 2017)

As one of only six faculty representatives for the entire College of Letters and Science (around 900 faculty) over the last five years, I have worked with divisional and college leadership teams through the reorganization from three divisions with three deans, to one college with one dean. During her term the last three years, Dean Spiller has almost erased the college’s structural debt of $9 million. As part of this executive committee, I have reviewed and approved academic policy manual revisions, numerous changes to majors and minors, and Academic Senate requests; we have been consulted on UC-wide policy changes, and debated proposals for an undergraduate business major and the start of Data Science at UC Davis. As a representative for the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, I have worked closely with faculty representatives from the Division of Social Sciences and Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Along with being departmental chair, this has been my primary training ground for college level leadership.

Member of Appointed Letters and Science Reorganization Work Group, Office of the Provost (Winter and Spring 2015)

This intensive and insightful two-quarter committee met over forty hours to investigate the pros and cons of reorganizing the College of Letters and Science from having three Divisional deans to having only College one. We interviewed Deans and top administrators at five comparable universities to discern the challenges of such a transition and potential benefits of doing so. Our final recommendation to move to the single dean model was not preordained, and through the process of arriving at this conclusion, I began to articulate the qualities of leadership that I admire and respect that are necessary for success among a diverse group of scholars, with different budgetary and infrastructural needs, from many different disciplines.

 

Undergraduate Advisor, Department of Art and Art History, College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM  (Fall 2004 – May 2008)

In this position I was responsible for advising about 30 undergraduate art history majors on their progression through the program from lower-division to upper-division coursework, as well as serving as an empathetic listener for career concerns they had.

 

 

RESEARCH

 

Books and Journal Special Issues

• Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
• Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, 2010), winner of the 2006 Edelstein Prize for outstanding book on the history of technology, awarded by the Society for the History of Technology; also nominated for the 2007 Charles Eldredge Prize for outstanding book on the history of American art.
• Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s, co-edited with Susan Currell (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006). 
• California Design, special issue of Boom: A Journal of California, co-guest-edited with Stuart Kendall 2:1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, March 2012).

 

Articles/Chapters

• “Sustainable Biodesign Innovation: Integrating Designers, Engineers, and Bioscientists,” KES Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Conference, Budapest, Hungary (July 2019) with publication in Springer’s Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies series v155, 23-33. Winner of Best Research Paper Award at the conference.
• “Variants of BioDesign,” Now, Next: Designs for Different Futures, exhibition catalogue for Philadelphia Museum of Art (October 2019), 112-115.
• “The Gene in Context: Complex Biological Systems as a Model for Generative Architecture,” in The Routledge Handbook of Biology in Art and Architecture, eds. Charissa Terranova and Meredith Tromble (New York: Routledge, 2016), 156-175.
• “On Complexism,” Technoetic Arts 14:1 (June 2016): 33-45.
• “Breeding Ideology: Parametricism and Biological Architecture,” in The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies and the Future(s) of Sociality, eds. Manuel Shvartzberg and Matthew Poole (Bloomsbury Press, 2015), 123-137.
• “Design” for Keywords in Disability Studies, eds. Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin (New York University Press, 2015), 59-60.
• “Norman Bel Geddes’s Theater of War,” in Donald Albrecht and Cathy Henderson, eds., I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (Austin, Texas: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center with Harry Abrams, 2012), 316-339.
• “Explorations in Design and Disability,” in BOOM: A Journal of California, special issue on California Design, guest edited by Christina Cogdell and Stuart Kendall, 2:1 (Spring 2012): 45.
• Numerous contributions in Visual Culture and Evolution, eds. Rick Welch, J. D. Talasek, and Kevin Finneran (Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences with the University of Maryland Baltimore County, December 2011, second prize Scholarly Journal winner in the 2012 American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition), 62-63, 88-95, 109-113, 142-149, 177-181, 190-191, 218-219.
• “From BioArt to BioDesign,” American Art (Summer 2011): 25-29.
• “Tearing Down the Grid,” Design and Culture 3.1 (March 2011): 75-84.
• “Fast Forward and Rewind,” co-authored with Simon Sadler, Counterculture issue of Volume 24:3 (September 2010): 50-52, published by Archis, The Netherlands.
• “Review of MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind,” Design Issues 25:3 (June 2009): 92-101.
• “Future Perfect? The Elusive ‘Ideal Type,’” in Corpus Delecti: Art, Sex and Eugenics, eds. Fae Brauer and Anthea Callen (Ashgate Publishers, 2008), 239-72 (reprint of Chapter 6 from Eugenic Design).
• “The Nazi Eugenics Exhibit in the United States, 1934-43,” co-authored with Robert Rydell and Mark Largent, in Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s, eds. Sue Currell and Christina Cogdell (Athens, Ohio: University of Ohio Press, 2006), 359-84.
• “Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology,” Design Issues (Winter 2003):  36-53.
• “The Futurama Recontextualized:  Norman Bel Geddes’s Eugenic ‘World of Tomorrow,’” American Quarterly 52:2 (June 2000):  193-245.

 

 

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

 

• “Sustainable Biodesign Innovation: Integrating Designers, Engineers, and Bioscientists,” winner of Best Research Paper Prize at KES Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Conference, Budapest, Hungary (July 2019).
• “Sustainable Biodesign Innovation: Biodesign Challenge, UC Davis, 2018,” Winner of the Community Choice and Runner-Up Prizes for Core 77 Design Awards, Design Education Initiative (2019).
• UC Davis Open Access Monograph Fund subvention grant for first online monograph publication of Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design, $13,705 (2018), available https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/toward-a-living-architecture
• UC Davis’s Innovation Institute for Food and Health, $1000 award for collaborative grant “Probiotic Fashion-Textile Development Using Kombucha Bacterial Cellulose,” June 2016.
• Chancellor’s Fellow, University of California at Davis, 2013-2017, $25,000.
• Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship for Self-Organizing Architecture? June 2011- June 2014, $225,000.
• Multicampus Research Grant for “California Architecture & Design,” University of California Humanities Research Institute, 2012-13 and 2011-12.
• Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Research Fellowship, one-month archival research for exhibition catalogue essay “Norman Bel Geddes’s Theater of War,” University of Texas at Austin, 2010-2011 competition.
• Summer Salary Research Grant, University of California at Davis, 2010.
• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Charles Ryskamp Fellowship for research on Generative Architecture (2008-11 competition), $80,000.
• Canadian Centre for Architecture Visiting Scholars Fellowship for residency in Montréal to research Generative Architecture, Summer 2009.
• Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on Generative Architecture with the Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, September 2008-May 2009.
• Edelstein Prize awarded to Eugenic Design for outstanding scholarly book on the history of technology published in the last three years, given by the Society for the History of Technology, Fall 2006.
• Wolfsonian – FIU Fellow, in residence in Miami Beach, June 2005, to research “Designing Humans:  Hygiene and the Aesthetics of the Body at U.S. World’s Fairs of the 1930s.”
• Graham Foundation Fellowship for assistance in publishing Eugenic Design, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Curatorial Fellowship in American Modernism for exhibit entitled Future Perfect?  Streamline Design and Eugenics in the 1930s, in residence at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Center for the Study of American Modernism, Santa Fe, NM, January-August, 2003.
• ACLS/Henry Luce Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, 1999-2000.
• Andrew W. Mellon Resident Research Fellow at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1999.

 

 

INVITED LECTURES

 

• “Designing Complexity: Pushing the Limits of Big Data,” invited talk for Columbia University’s Precision Medicine & Society Conference, New York City, and for the Architecture Lecture Series, California College of the Arts, San Francisco (April 2019).
• “The Longue Durée of Eugenic Design,” The Aesthetics of Adaptation symposium, ETH, Zurich (March 2019).
• “Towards a Living Architecture? Complexity and Biology in Generative Architecture,” Donald L. Torbert Lecture for Research in Architectural History, University of Minnesota, Department of Art History (October 2017).
• “From Eugenics to SynBioDesign: A Long Historical Perspective,” invited paper for panel Synthetic Biology and Design, Neolife Conference, Society for Literature, Science and Art, Perth, Western Australia (October 2, 2015).
• “On Complexism,” invited paper for panel Complexism: Art + Architecture + Biology + Computation, A New Axis in Critical Theory?, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Vancouver, British Columbia (August 18, 2015).
• “If Democracy Is Not Inclusive, What is Democratic Architecture?” invited talk for symposium “The Figure of Democracy: Houses, Housing and the Polis,” Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, Columbia University GSAPP (May 9-10, 2014).
• “Breeding Ideology: Parametricism and Biological Architecture,” invited lecture for symposium The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies and the Future(s) of Sociality, REDCAT, Los Angeles, November 15-16, 2013, available at http://vimeo.com/channels/643760
• “Uncoiling the Knot: Understanding ‘Self-Organization’ in Generative Architecture and Complex Biological Systems,” talk for UC Berkeley History of Architecture’s NOAH (Nights of Architectural History), April 4, 2013, and for UC Davis Cultural Studies Colloquium, April 11, 2013.
• Eugenics expert consultant for Anderson Cooper: The Daily Show for special feature on forced sterilizations in the United States (March 16, 2012); also interviewed and featured on CNN’s documentary about forced sterilization in California, “Sterilization Victims Seek Compensation” (March 8, 2012).
• “Understanding Self-Organization in Complex Systems and Generative Architecture,” Visual and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts (February 2012).
• “Analog Google Earth: Norman Bel Geddes Models Scalar Geographic Vision During World War II,” Department of History, University of Sussex, UK (November 2011).
• “Eliminating Disease and Optimizing Fitness through Eugenic Design” for “The Body in History/The Body in Space” conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Barker Center for the Humanities, March 2011.
• Invited expert for “Evolution and Visual Culture” international online symposium, sponsored by the Cultural Programs for the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, and University of Maryland Center for Art and Visual Culture, April 5-14, 2010, available to public through blog: http://vcande.blogspot.com/ (accessed April 2010).
• “The Gene in Context: Organic Complex Systems as a Model for Generative Architecture,” invited talk for the Darwin Celebrations, conference on The Art of Evolution: Charles Darwin and Visual Cultures, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, July 2-4, 2009.
• “Writing Eugenic Design: Making and Unmaking Modernity Through Science, Technology, Design, and History,” invited talk at the Smithsonian Contemporary History Colloquium, National Air and Space Museum, May 21, 2009.
• “Growing Living Buildings through Genetic Architecture?” invited talk at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, March 26, 2009.
• “Avant-Garde Organicism: Unraveling the Rhetoric of Emergent Genetic Architecture,” invited lecture for the Inside-Out series, History and Theory of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, November 2008.
• “Tackling the Taboo: Streamline Design and Eugenics,” keynote address on the theme of taking risks in architecture and design scholarship, delivered at the annual conference of the Interior Design (and Architecture) Educators Association, Wellington, New Zealand, July 2007, and also to Design Studies students at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
• “Designer-Breeder:  Norman Bel Geddes, Streamline Design and Eugenics,” invited lecture for the symposium “Usable Pasts?  American Art from the Armory Show to Art of this Century,” University of Pennsylvania, Department of Art History, March 2007.
• “Designing Evolution,” invited lecture at “The Constructed Environment:  Design and Its Discourses of Naturalization,” symposium at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, in conjunction with the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, Columbia University, October, 2004.

 

 

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (SAMPLE)

 

• “Sustainable Biodesign Innovation: Integrating Designers, Engineers, and Bioscientists,” KES Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Conference, Budapest, Hungary (July 2019), with publication in Springer’s Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies series.
• “Circular Economy, Linear History? Changing How We Teach the Design History Survey,” Design, Justice and Zero Waste: Exploring Pathways to a Circular Economy at Parsons, The New School, New York City (May 2018).
• “Sustainability and Colonialism? Contradictions in Discourses of Genetic Architecture and Design,” for panel I organized on “High-Tech Sustainability and Socioeconomic Justice,” annual conference of the American Studies Association, Washington, DC, Nov. 5, 2009.
• “Design and Justice: The Sociopolitics of Aligning Contemporary Design with Recent Scientific Discourses,” presentation to the Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, May 2009.
• “The Challenge of Post-Darwinian Theories for Emergent Genetic Architecture,” invited colloquium talk for the Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, April 2009.
• “Growing Living Buildings: Emergent Genetic Architecture and the State of Bioengineering Technologies,” invited colloquium talk at Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, April 2009.
• “From Eugenic Design to Generative Architecture,” presentation of research in progress to Jenny Sabin’s and Peter Lloyd Jones’ LabStudio, School of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, November 2008.
• “Why Evolution as a Paradigm for Design? Is this a Metaphor, or Something More?,” Design and Evolution Conference, Design History Society, Delft, The Netherlands, August-September, 2006.
• “Eugenic Design:  Streamlining as Top-Down Aesthetic Reform,” annual meeting of the College Art Association, Chicago, Illinois, March, 2001.
• “Evolution and the Rise of Modern Architecture,” Society for Literature and Science Annual Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, October, 2000.
• “The Futurama Recontextualized:  Norman Bel Geddes’s Eugenic ‘World of Tomorrow,” annual convention of the American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, October, 1999.
• “Pseudoscience?  Pseudostyle?:  Eugenics and Streamlined Design,” Society for Literature and Science Annual Convention, Norman, Oklahoma, October, 1999 and at the Buell Dissertation Colloquium, Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, Columbia University, May, 1999.
• “The ‘World of Tomorrow’:  Evolution and Norman Bel Geddes’ Futuristic Design at the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” Hypotheses 3, The Graduate Symposium of the Princeton School of Architectural History and Theory, Princeton, New Jersey, February, 1999.
• “Norman Bel Geddes and Evolutionary Thought:  The Futurama Recontextualized,” Symposium on the History of Art, Boston University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, March, 1998; also at the Eleanor Greenhill Graduate Symposium in Art History, Univ. of Texas at Austin, April, 1998.

 

 

CAMPUS SERVICE (beyond those listed under Administrative Experience)

 

• Internal Review of submissions for Mellon New Directions Fellowship, UC Davis, Sept. 2018.
• Member of the Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies Division of the College, Steering Committee, Fall 2014 – present.
• UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies, selection committee for Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award and Graduate Student Travel Awards, 2012-13.
• “Future of UC Davis” faculty representative, UCD Television and UCD Magazine feature, Winter 2013.
• Committee service for Vice Chancellor of Research’s office on the Request for Applications drafting committee for the Interdisciplinary Frontiers in the Humanities and Arts of the Interdisciplinary Frontiers Program, March-April 2012.
• Reviewer of NEH Summer Stipend Grant for the Davis Humanities Institute, August 2010.

 

 

COMMUNITY SERVICE

 

• Proposed and led to passage by the Hispanic Advisory Council and the Winters City Council the “Proclamation of Community Values and Affirmations” that upholds safety, protecting citizens’ constitutional rights, and respecting inclusion and diversity “regardless of socio-economic status, religious, ethnic or national background, sexual or gender identity, clothing choices, or language spoken,” Winters, California (November 2016-April 18, 2017).

 

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

 

• External review of promotion to full professor for colleague at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 2019.
• External review of tenure file for colleague at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, August 2018.
• Review of submissions for Quite Frankly: It’s a Monster Conference, SymbioticA, University of Western Australia (May 2018).
• External review of tenure file for colleague at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, August 2017.
• Consultant to NEH application for exhibition Beyond the Horizon: Designs for Different Futures, to be held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019) and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2020), July 2017.
• Selection Committee for Edelstein Book Prize 2013-2015 competitions for outstanding book in the history of technology published in the last 3 years, Society for the History of Technology.
• Manuscript Reviewer for The University of Texas Press, Fall 2016.
• Manuscript Reviewer for Journal of Cleaner Production, July 2015.
• Manuscript Reviewer for Design and Culture, January 2014.
• Manuscript Reviewer for Journal of Architecture Research, September 2013.
• Consultant for research on Norman Bel Geddes’s wartime projects by request.
• Manuscript Reviewer for CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, June 2012.
• Manuscript Reviewer for the Journal of American History, February 2012.
• Manuscript reviewer for the journal Technology and Culture, January 2011 and April 2012.
• NEH Scholarly Advisor for the exhibition I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, December 2010-2012.
• Indexed the Norman Bel Geddes film collection and discovered two previously unknown Hugh Ferriss architectural renderings in the Norman Bel Geddes Collection, during research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, December 2010.
• External review of tenure file for colleague at Washington State University, August 2010.
• Coordinator of the Science and Technology Caucus of the American Studies Association, 2009-2011; member since 2007.
• Book manuscript reviewer for the University of Massachusetts Press, April 2010.
• Outside reviewer of applications for the topic “Design and Hygiene” for 2010-2011 competition, The Wolfsonian – Florida International University (March 2010).
• Published “The Allure of Progress: The Murals and Lobby Design of 2601 Parkway,” in the in-house newsletter for residents of 2601 Parkway Condominiums, Philadelphia, PA (June 2009).
• Manuscript reviewer for the Journal of Design History (Fall 2007).
• Co-curator, Organizer and Producer of CAMP: Art and Sustainability, April 2007 and April 2006, two-time outdoor exhibition featuring more than 20 local and regional artists held at Hyde Memorial State Park, Santa Fe.
• Advisory Board Member of H-Eugenics, the History of Eugenics listserv, at http://www.h-net.org/~eugenics/, 2006-2012.
• NEH Consultant to the Wolfsonian – Florida International University for a grant aiding the reinstallation of their permanent collection, August and October, 2006.
• Member of NEH Advisory Board for Designing the World of Tomorrow:  U.S. World’s Fairs of the 1930s, National Building Museum, curated by Howard Decker, Laura Schiavo, and Robert Rydell, 2003-2010.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) reviewer for a grant application for the History and Philosophy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2006 competition.
• Manuscript reviewer for Ohio University Press, From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America, 1939-1959, by Cynthia Henthorn (ms. reviewed 2004, book published 2006).
• Created the Santa Fe Green Map, featuring local sustainable businesses and organizations, sponsored by Green Map Systems and published as the centerfold in Sustainable Santa Fe: A Resource Guide, 40,000 copies distributed by The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, Fall 2006.

 

 

CURRENT AND PAST EMPLOYMENT

Chair and Professor of Design, Department of Design, University of California at Davis, July 2009 – Present.

Penn Humanities Forum Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2008-Spring 2009.

Assistant Professor, Department of Art & Art History, College of Santa Fe, Fall 2004-May 2008.

Assistant Professor, Liberal Studies Program, California State University – Fullerton, Fall 2001-2004 (on medical leave 2003-2004).

 

 

STUDENTS ADVISED

 

PhD Committees

]MayEe Wong, Cultural Studies (committee member) [completed May 2019; applying for postdoctoral positions]

Amanda Modell, Cultural Studies (chair) [completed January 2019; Associate Director of Graduate Teaching Programs, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University]

 

MFA Committee

Elizabeth Marley, Design (chair) [will graduate June 2020]; Eldy Lazaro, Design (committee member) [will graduate June 2020]; Emily Harris, Design (committee member) [2018]; Nikitaa Sivaakumar, Design (committee member) [2016]; Emma Thorne-Christy, Design (committee member) [2014]

 

MA Committees

Noel Albertsen, Art History (chair) [will finish March 2020]; Alex Craven, Art History (Chair) [2016]; Brittany Royer, Art History (chair) [2016]; Melanie Ross, Art History (chair) [2010]

 

PhD Qualifying Exams

Xan Chacko, Cultural Studies (2016); MayEe Wong (2016); Ksenia Federova (2015)

 

Undergraduate Theses (American Studies/University Honors Program)

Elizabeth McAllister (2019); Tracy Manuel (2015)

 

Undergraduate Honors Program (instructor)

2020 Biodesign Challenge Competition 2-quarter course, UHP 194/DES 128

2019 Biodesign Challenge Competition 2-quarter course, UHP 194/DES 128

2013 Biodesign Challenge Competition 2-quarter course, UHP 194/DES 128

 

 

COURSES TAUGHT

 

UC Davis (Design, Art History, Cultural Studies & American Studies Departments) (2009-present)

DES 222 Research Methods and Critical Writing for Design

DES 221 Theories and Issues in Design

DES 128 Biodesign Theory and Practice (alternate Biodesign Challenge version)

DES 40A Energy, Materials and Design Across Time

CST 295 Self-Organization and Emergence in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

AHI 250 Nature Theorized, Nature Materialized: 20^th-Century American Architecture & Design

AHI 188B History of American Architecture

AMS 160 Seminar: History of Eugenics in America, 1890 to the Present

AMS 030 Images of America and Americans in Popular Culture

 

University of Pennsylvania (Art History & History of Science Departments) (2008-2009)

Nature Theorized, Nature Materialized: 20^th-Century American Architecture & Design

History of Eugenics in America, 1890 to the Present

 

College of Santa Fe (Art and Art History Department) (2004-2008)

Contemporary American Art

Modern Art (European)

American Art and Architecture

Earth Art and Sustainability

The American Southwest

American Consumer Culture

 

California State University – Fullerton (Liberal Studies Department) (2001-2004)

History of Art, Architecture, Music and Poetry from Renaissance to Modern

 

 

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

 

Spanish, some French and German