Gail Fenske

Gail Fenske teaches subjects in art and architectural history, including the history of modern architecture; of American architecture, urbanism, and landscape; and the introduction to global art and architectural history.  Her teaching and research emphasize art and architecture’s intersection with broader social and cultural contexts, among them urban, technological, and visual, with the latter incorporating the printed media, photography, and film.

She is author of The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and co-editor of Aalto and America (Yale University Press, 2012).  She is currently preparing Skyscrapers: Landmarks in American Cities for publication with the Library of Congress.  She is also the author of several essays in books, among them Skyscraper Gothic (University of Virginia Press, 2017), The American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and The Landscape of Modernity (John Hopkins University Press, 1997); and of the bibliography “Skyscrapers” for Oxford Bibliographies in Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (Oxford University Press, 2020).

She has recently served as Book Review Editor, the Americas, for the Society of Architectural Historians Journal, in the Office of Secretary, Society of Architectural Historians, and on the Board of Directors for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and MIT).  She has held visiting professorships at Wellesley and MIT. 

At Roger Williams University, she currently serves as Director, Program in Art & Architectural History for the Cummings School of Architecture as well as serving on the Honors Advisory Council, Faculty Senate, and the Foundation to Promote Scholarship and Teaching.  She has received recognition for her teaching, including the award of “Most Influential Professor” from the University’s Alpha Chi Honor Society.  

List of Publications