Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: landscape, Renaissance, Italy, architectural history, villa, garden

About Me: Born and raised in west Michigan, I moved to Chicago for my undergraduate studies at Columbia College Chicago. I completed my Masters of Arts in Art and Design with a minor in literature in 2013. In 2017, I received my Masters of Architectural History from the University of Virginia. I have spent just under two years studying and working in Italy over the past few years. Currently, I am a student at the University of Texas in my first year of coursework in the Architectural History PhD program.

My master’s thesis, “Expatriate Gardens in Tuscany: Planting Ideas of Nationality,” examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century gardens of villas Gamberaia, I Tatti, and La Foce as a reflection of shared and transmuted garden traditions in Tuscany during the rise of nationalist tensions.

My doctoral interests and research lies in the garden and landscape history of Renaissance Florence and Rome. Current projects include a study of the methodological approach to operational grotesques at Villa d’Este in Tivoli and research concerning the agricultural condition around Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

During my time at UVA, I wrote a book review of Building Construction Before Mechanization by John Fitchen and The Culture of Building by Howard Davis in the framework of defining vernacular as a system of knowledge. I intend to enter this piece into the published discussion of the vernacular.

Recent Publications: My master’s thesis, “Expatriate Gardens in Tuscany: Planting Ideas of Nationality,” examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century gardens of villas Gamberaia, I Tatti, and La Foce as a reflection of shared and transmuted garden traditions in Tuscany during the rise of nationalist tensions.