DR. KATE HOLLIDAY APPOINTED A MELLON FELLOW AT HARVARD'S DUMBARTON OAKS
Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks is leading a major award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to grow and expand interdisciplinary programs in urban landscape. The Mellon Fellowships initiative offers opportunities to study the history and future of urban landscapes through the lens of democracy, race, identity, and difference. This will be the second time one of our CAPPA faculty members has received a prestigious fellowship appointment at Dumbarton Oaks. Landscape Architecture Director Dr. Diane Allen is currently in residency as a Garden and Landscape Studies Fellow and is expected to return this summer.
Dr. Holliday is the founding director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture and has established a national reputation as an architectural historian whose research and teaching focuses on the built environment in American cities. Through the Dillon Center, she brings together scholars and experts across disciplines to discuss issues related to architecture and urbanism in North Texas pertaining to urban development and historic preservations with a focus on social justice and equity.
Dr. Holliday aims to complete her in-progress book manuscript "Telephone City: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Bell Monopoly." The book explores architecture and design as expressions of corporate monopoly that shaped the American city. This interdisciplinary project reveals hidden connections between architecture, the telephone, and the modern city. Related to this project is her essay on "Building a National Network: Telephone Buildings in the United States, " published in the Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia.
CAPPA Interim Dean Dr. Maria Martinez-Cosio adds, "this type of scholarly research helps us better understand the impact of corporate growth and telecommunications infrastructure on the urban and suburban landscape, which better informs future design and community development within and outside the North Texas region."
Approximately 50 faculty from around the world are offered a variety of fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks, including junior, postdoctoral, visiting scholar, and teaching fellows allowing for a rich cross-disciplinary fellowship community housed at the gardens in Washington, D.C. during their award terms.
"This project was first supported by a Dupont Fellowship at the Hagley Library and I have spent many weeks there, as well as at the AT&T Archives and Library in San Antonio, Texas and in Warren, New Jersey, and at architects' archives in New York and California.
This fellowship will allow me to focus on writing and provide access to a wealth of research materials in the collections of the Smithsonian and Library of Congress in Washington, DC.” Kate Holliday