Dianne Harris, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of history, was named a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH). Founded at Harvard University in 1940, the SAH promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of the built environment worldwide, and it is the primary learned society for historians of architecture, cultural landscapes, and cities. Dean Harris served as a member of the SAH Board of Directors from 2003-2006 before being elected to serve a six year term as an executive officer for the society that culminated in her service as president from 2010-2012. During that time, she also served as editor-in-chief for an innovative digital image archive that was funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, known as “SAHARA,” and she currently serves on the society’s Digital Advisory Committee.
Harris’ scholarship has a broad temporal and geographic reach spanning from 18th-century Lombardy to the postwar United States. Her research is united by a sustained focus on the relationship between the built environment and the construction of racial and class identities, and she is best known for her contributions to the study of “race and space.” She holds a Ph.D. in architectural history from the University of California, Berkeley.
In addition to her numerous scholarly articles and essays, Harris’ award-winning publications include the co-edited volumes Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France (2001) and Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision (2007). She is editor of Second Suburb: Levittown, Pennsylvania (2010), and she is the author of The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy (2003) and Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America (2013, second printing 2021).
She is also the founding and continuing editor for the University of Pittsburgh Press’s “Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment” series which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.
According to SAH, “Fellows are individuals who have distinguished themselves by a lifetime of significant contributions to the field, which may include scholarship, service to the Society, teaching, and stewardship of the built environment.”
Ken Tadashi Oshima, professor in the Department of Architecture in the College of Built Environments was also named an SAH Fellow, as well as former UW professor Gail Dubrow (currently at the University of Minnesota).
The SAH will recognize new Fellows during the Society’s annual international conference in Pittsburgh in April.