Dubrow, Gail Lee

PERSONAL: Female. Education: University of Oregon, B.Arch., 1980; University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D., 1991.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of Washington, College of Architecture & Urban Planning, 410 Gould Hall, Box 35570, Seattle, WA 98195-5720. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and educator. University of Washington, Seattle, professor of architecture, urban design, and planning, associate dean for research and computing, adjunct professor of history and women's studies, director of preservation planning and design certificate program. Member of Seattle Design Commission, 1996–2000; member of board of directors, Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2001–04.

MEMBER: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (western regional director, 2001–04).

AWARDS, HONORS: Recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Institute of Architects/American Architectural Foundation, the American Association of University Women, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. National Park Service.

WRITINGS:

(Designer, with Judy Anderson and John Koval) The Library Book: A Good Book for a Rainy Day, Seattle Arts Commission (Seattle, WA), 1991.

(With Donna Graves) Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage, Seattle Arts Commission (Seattle, WA), 2002.

(Editor, with Jennifer B. Goodman) Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Architecture: A Place for Women, edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1989; Re-claiming the Past, edited by Page Putnam Miller, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1992; Making the Invisible Visible, edited by Leonie Sander-cock, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998; and Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, edited by Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals, including CRM and Planning Theory. Member of editorial board, Journal of Architectural Education, 2000–03.

SIDELIGHTS: Author Gail Lee Dubrow is a professor of architecture, urban design, and planning at the University of Washington. She frequently teaches on topics related to American urban history and on architectural preservation. Her research interests include topics such as historic preservation, history of the built environment, and women's studies.

Her coauthored book Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage offers consideration and analysis of the experiences of Japanese Americans, both issei (first-generation immigrants) and Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans). Dubrow and coauthor Donna Graves look at ten landmarks in Washington and California that are important to Japanese-American heritage, and discuss in depth how these landmarks were and are important to Japanese Americans. "With the aid of oral histories, Dubrow and Graves skillfully let material objects and photographic images tell nuanced stories of work, recreation, community, and family among Japanese Americans," noted reviewer Eiichiro Azumo in the Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, which Dubrow coedited, includes twenty-one essays that examine the role of women in historic preservation as well as the activities of women who inhabited historic sites. The book is divided into five sections that cover the history of women in the preservation movement; women's lives at historic houses and museums; claiming new space for women in the built environment and cultural landscape; exemplary projects; and developing an inclusive future agenda for preservation policy. Most of the essays in the book are "concerned with rethinking the interpretation at historic sites and museums so that women's roles become central to the story," observed Martha Norkunas in the Women's Review of Books. Daphne Spain, writing in the Journal of the American Planning Association, called the book "a solid addition to the literature on women and preservation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, December, 2003, J.M. Lewis, review of Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, p. 774.

Journal of the American Planning Association, spring, 2004, Daphne Spain, review of Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, p. 243.

Oregon Historical Quarterly, summer, 2003, Eiichiro Azumo, review of Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage, p. 273.

Public Historian, winter, 2003, Nadine Ishitani Hata, review of Sento at Sixth and Main, p. 106; fall, 2004, Anne M. Valk, review of Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, p. 119.

Women's Review of Books, September, 2004, Martha Norkunas, "Shaping the Past," review of Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation, p. 23.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (January 15, 2006), review of Sento at Sixth and Main; Elizabeth Wiatr, review of Sento at Sixth and Main.

University of Washington College of Architecture Web site, http://depts.washington.edu/archdept/ (January 15, 2006), biography of Gail Lee Dubrow.