Dolores Hayden

Walker Ames Endowment

• Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and professor of American Studies, Yale University

May 7, 2013   |   6:30 p.m.
Kane Hall, Room 120

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Green Fields and Growth Machines: Building American Suburbs, 1820-2000

From rustic cottages reached by steamboat to big box stores near the exit ramps of eight-lane highways, developers of suburban environments have transformed the American landscape since 1820. While suburban residents have aspired to home, nature and community, developers have cherished different dreams, seeking profit from increased suburban densities while lobbying local and federal government to reduce the risk of real estate speculation. Defining seven historic patterns in the American landscape, Hayden separates suburbanization from sprawl to decode the maze of houses, tracts, highways and commercial edge cities where most Americans live and work.

About Dolores Hayden

Dolores Hayden, Professor of Architecture, Urbanism, and American Studies at Yale University, studies the history of the built environment and the spatial organization of everyday life. Her award-winning books include Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism (1976); Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth (2003); and A Field Guide to Sprawl (2004). Three others give special attention to women's lives and work: The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (1981); Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life (1984, revised and expanded, 2002); and The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (1995).

Educated at Mount Holyoke College, Cambridge University, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Hayden is an urban historian and architect who taught at MIT, UC Berkeley, and UCLA before coming to Yale in 1991. Recently she has been a fellow of the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where she co-led a 2009 workshop, "Researching the Built Environment." She's received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the ACLS/Ford Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Graham Foundation, the NEA, the NEH, and the Radcliffe Institute. She served as president of the Urban History Association in 2010.

Hayden is also a widely published poet whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The American Scholar, Southwest Review, Shenandoah, Slate, Raritan, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been a fellow at Djerassi and won awards from the Poetry Society of America and the New England Poetry Club. Her recent collections include American Yard (2004) and Nymph, Dun, and Spinner (2010).

For more details: www.DoloresHayden.com.

Sponsoring Departments:

• UW Graduate School
• UW Alumni Association
• Department of Geography
• Department of History and Gender
• Department of Landscape Architecture
• Women and Sexuality Studies Department