About
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. Her current book project, Designing an Accessible America, traces the history of design responses to disability rights from 1945 to recent times. Her writing has appeared in Winterthur Portfolio and American Studies, with reviews in Design and Culture and Design Issues.
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 coordinator of design history offerings in SAIC’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism. Education
PhD, History of American Civilization, University of Delaware
MA, History of Decorative Arts and Design, Parsons The New School for Design, 2005 Publications
“Getting a Grip: Disability and American Industrial Design of the Late Twentieth Century.” Winterthur Portfolio 46, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 213–36.
Williamson, Bess. “Electric Moms and Quad Drivers: People with Disabilities Buying, Making, and Using Technology in Postwar America.” American Studies 52, no. 1 (2012): 5–30.
“Small-Scale Technology for the Developing World: Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, 1959–1971.” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, June 2009. Projects
Designing an Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (New York University Press, 2018) Upcoming Talks and Conferences
Society for the History of Technology, Annual Meeting, October 26-29
American Studies Association, November Memberships
American Studies Association
College Art Association
Society for the History of Technology
Design Studies Forum
