Additional information
by Nancy a. Austin Phd (Author)
The first design schools in America were founded by women, for women. "The Women Who Founded RISD" introduces the remarkable women who founded the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, RI, USA, in a second wave, 140 years ago, because they believed in the power of design to effect change. The challenges these women overcame tell a timely tale as we continue to discuss how to empower women for a changing tech-driven workplace. It provides backstory for the current mandate to embrace STEAM education. This volume is part of a series based on Nancy Austin's 2009 Brown University PhD thesis on the women who founded RISD; it was one of the first United States dissertations to look at the history of design education and the entwined histories of art, design, engineering, and entrepreneurship.
Author Biography
Dr. Nancy Austin is a design historian, educator, and leadership coach based in Rhode Island. From 1985- to 2008, she taught critical histories of art and industrial design at RISD, Yale, and WPI, before transitioning in 2009 to employment as a consultant and empowerment coach. Nancy continues to contribute to and collaborate with a broad range of non-profit cultural institutions and initiatives. As a scholar, Dr. Austin's work considers the relationship between art and design. A particular focus is how women understood design as a possible vehicle for the pursuit of economic independence and personal liberty in the face of cultural and technological change. Since the early 1990, she has given conference papers about and published scholarship on the history of RISD and Rhode Island's art world. She contributed "Educating American Designers for Industry, 1853--1903," to The Cultivation of American Artists: Education and the Commerce of Art in 19th--century America, ed. Diana Korzenik. (American Antiquarian Society, 1997). She received her Ph.D. from Brown University with a thesis on the entrepreneurial women who founded RISD.
