Mary R. Springer--assistant professor of art history at Louisiana Tech University--holds a B.A. in studio art and religious studies from Doane University, a M.A. in art history from the University of Saint Thomas, and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Iowa. A polymathic modern and American historian, she teaches global history and theory within Louisiana Tech's School of Design’s programs of studio art, design, and architecture. She also serves on the board of SESAH (Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians) as the Louisiana state representative, formerly the Alabama state representative. Outside of teaching and research, she is a landscape artist, typewriter aficionado, and arts and preservation advocate.Springer’s professional research and practice is three-fold—architectural history, art and design historical pedagogy, and landscape art. While the three pursuits intersect, her primary research evaluates the history of United States higher educational architecture and space. Recent projects examine town-gown implications in the construction and design of the Cathedral of Learning (University of Pittsburgh),Duke University’s colonially encoded architecture and landscape,Frederick Law Olmsted’s campus planning ideas as architectural determinism,socio-political meanings of the “Campus” as contact zone, andthe history of collegiate architecture and campuses as architectural narrative and landscape biography. Related to the campus, she teaches and researches the history and theory of North American landscape art, architecture, and design; her current project analyzes the EJI Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama. Springer’s secondary research probes the historiographic and pedagogical consequences of Eurocentric chronologies and social memory in teaching the global design survey. Her scholarly interests in social memory and landscape inform her tertiary practice in art. Landscape is a principal focus in her painting, printmaking, and drawing, which collectively mine the myriad manifestations of land, sky, and atmosphere in physical and conceptual form. Landscape reveals, echoes, and incites the personal and collective memories of its use and encounter. In her research—history, pedagogy, and fine art—Springer remains preoccupied by three critical questions: Whose history; whose memory; and whose space?
