A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Bess Williamson

Professor

Contact

Bio

Professor, Art History, Theory, and Criticism (2022); Associate Professor (2018); Assistant Professor (2012). Education: BA, 1998, Brown University, Providence, RI; MA, 2005, Parsons The New School for Design/Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; Ph.D., 2011, The University of Delaware, Newark. Books: as author/editor: Making Disability Modern: Design Histories (co-editor, with Elizabeth Guffey); Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design. Books: as contributor: Curating Access; Keywords in Disability Studies; Oxford Handbook of Disability History; Disability, Space, Architecture: a Reader.

Personal Statement

Dr. Bess Williamson is a historian of design and material culture, focusing primarily on works and influences of the last half-century. She received her PhD in American History from the University of Delaware, and holds a Masters in the History of Design and Decorative Arts from Parsons The New School for Design/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She is particularly interested in social and political concerns in design, including environmental, labor, justice, and rights issues as they shape and are shaped by spaces and things. She is the author of Accessible America: A History of Design and Disability (NYU Press, 2019; winner of Horowitz Prize from Bard Graduate Center) and co-editor, with Elizabeth Guffey, of Making Disability Modern: Design Histories (Bloomsbury, 2020). Recent contributions also include a co-authored chapter with Liz Jackson in Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation (Amanda Cachia, ed.; Routledge 2023).

At SAIC, Williamson teaches a range of design history courses, from introductory surveys of modern design history to graduate seminars on issues in design, politics, and technology. She is the Program Director of the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art.

Current publications and news can be found at besswilliamson.com.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This class plots domestic histories of design in pursuit of inclusive design and community. Readings, writings, and collective experiments in sewing, cooking, organizing, and caregiving explore the pleasures and constraints of domestic life; adaptation of commercial designs and DIY kits; and plotting design justice futures. Making and writing options are introduced throughout the course and are flexible to students of all skill levels. This course combines making with research to shape our field of study. Historical materials include sewing patterns, feminist housekeeping critiques, and Flaxman Librarys extensive collection of cookbooks. Making projects (no skills/experience required) focus on DIY learning, learning through verbal and visual cues rather than written ones, and collective stitch-n-bitch models. Readings include theories of the family and queer domesticity; disability and illness as a part of home design and adaptation; and feminist and anti-racist critiques of household labor and proposals for liberatory alternatives. All students in this class will make things, engage with a variety of writing modes, and combine traditional research methods with the knowledge gained through making. Reading responses and papers will accompany their practice-based material culture study. Final projects will include a choice of formats incorporating historical research.

Class Number

1029

Credits

3

Description

This class plots domestic histories of design in pursuit of inclusive design and community. Readings, writings, and collective experiments in sewing, cooking, organizing, and caregiving explore the pleasures and constraints of domestic life; adaptation of commercial designs and DIY kits; and plotting design justice futures. Making and writing options are introduced throughout the course and are flexible to students of all skill levels. This course combines making with research to shape our field of study. Historical materials include sewing patterns, feminist housekeeping critiques, and Flaxman Library’s extensive collection of cookbooks. Making projects (no skills/experience required) focus on DIY learning, learning through verbal and visual cues rather than written ones, and collective “stitch-n-bitch” models. Readings include theories of the family and queer domesticity; disability and illness as a part of home design and adaptation; and feminist and anti-racist critiques of household labor and proposals for liberatory alternatives. All students in this class will make things, engage with a variety of writing modes, and combine traditional research methods with the knowledge gained through making. Reading responses and papers will accompany their practice-based material culture study. Final projects will include a choice of formats incorporating historical research.

Class Number

1153

Credits

3

Description

This course takes its title from Rosemarie Garland-Thomson?s 1997 book that did much to establish the field of cultural disability studies. The course seeks answers to Garland-Thomson?s queries about how physical and intellectual difference are constructed in cultural production by looking at image, object, and spatial representations of disability from the 19th century to recent times. The course is conducted in seminar style, while also seeking to model accessible formats of academic writing, discussion and exchange. Topics include disability in art and aesthetic histories (Tobin Siebers, Garland-Thomson, Ann Millet-Gallant), museum collections and interpretation (Georgina Kleege, Amanda Cachia), design and technology studies (Christina Cogdell, David Serlin, Ashley Shew), and, throughout the course, access in scholarly and artistic practices and spaces (Aimi Hamraie, Margaret Price). Assignments include in-class presentations, short writings, and exercises exploring accessibility in our lives & work. The course ends with a long-form paper, presented to the class in symposium-style with peer comments and opportunities for ongoing editing.

Class Number

2112

Credits

3

Description

A master's thesis is required for completion of the master's degree in arts administration. The thesis should demonstrate a student's ability to design, justify, execute, evaluate, and present the results of original research or of a substantial project. In this class students work closely with an MAAAP program advisor, and meet frequently with other MAAAP participants in groups and in individual meetings. The thesis is presented, in both written and oral form, to a thesis committee for both initial and final approval. You must be a Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy student to enroll in this course.

Class Number

2532

Credits

3

Description

This independent study program for Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism candidates is taken in the final term of coursework.

Class Number

2537

Credits

3