Elizabeth Keslacy

Elizabeth Keslacy is an architectural historian and design educator whose work deals with postwar and postmodern architecture and urbanism, the museology of design, and the discipline’s intellectual history. She is currently writing a book entitled Concrete Leisure: Public Space, Recreation, and Black Political Agency in the American Rust Belt that examines fantastical urban landscapes built in the post-Civil Rights era, as Black communities took on the leadership of major cities in the American Midwest. Her dissertation research traced the history of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum to its origins as a decorative arts teaching museum within The Cooper Union to unpack how the decorative arts were reformulated as “design” in the twentieth century. Keslacy has taught design and history at the University of Michigan, Lawrence Technological University, Kendall College of Art and Design, and most recently at Miami University of Ohio. Her research has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, and the Miami University Humanities Center. Her work has been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, Footprint, Thresholds, OASE, Architecture Theory Review and Lotus International.