Structures of Success: Women Leading in Architecture and Design

Gabrielle Esperdy, PhD is Dean of the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where she has taught since 2001. An architectural and urban historian, she studies intersections of modernism and consumerism in metropolitan landscapes and on feminism and queer theory in architecture and urbanism. Her most recent book American Autopia examines how architectural and urban discourse absorbed the ideals and concerns of the automobile and the territories of the car in the middle of the 20th century. A regular contributor to Places, she is also Editor in Chief of SAH Archipedia and Buildings of the United States, a digital resource and book series published by the University of Virginia Press.

Alice T. Friedman is an architectural historian who has written numerous articles and books about gender, sexuality, and queer space, including Women and the Making of the Modern House (1998), American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture (2010), and Queer Moderns: Max Ewing’s Jazz Age New York (2025). In 2023, she retired from teaching at Wellesley College, where she was the Grace Slack McNeil Professor of Art and a founding director of the Architecture Program. Friedman’s current project is a book of essays entitled Poker Faces which examines queer domesticities and modern designs for non-conforming households.

Sarah Lichtman is the Chair of the History of Art and Design department at Pratt Institute. In her prior role, she served as the Dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory. A recipient of The New School’s Distinguished Teaching Award, she was an associate professor of design history and an affiliate member of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute at The New School. Her teaching ranged from design history to gender studies, and her courses included Gender and Design, Nordic Design, and Cold War Modern, as well as core courses in the School of Art and Design History and Theory.
As a scholar, Lichtman’s focus is on design history and material culture. She has authored several books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles, with her work appearing in prestigious journals, such as Design and Culture, the Journal of Modern Craft, West 86th, and the Journal of Design History.
Lichtman holds a PhD and MA in History of Design from the Bard Graduate Center. She has received numerous fellowships, grants, honors, and awards from both national and international organizations, including a visiting scholar position from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists.