Ellen Weiss is a full professor at the Tulane School of Architecture. She is the author of numerous articles, reviews, chapters, and reports on American architecture and urbanism. Her City in the Woods, the Life and Design of an American Camp Meeting on Martha’s Vineyard (Oxford 1987 and Northeastern 1998) investigates a uniquely American institution and the architectural and planning inventions that spread across the continent within these community forms. Her preoccupation with specialized American places that were initiated by utopian impulses fuels her current work on Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and its principle designer, Robert R. Taylor. Taylor graduated in architecture from MIT in 1892, becoming the first academically trained African American architect. A book manuscript is in pre-publication review.

Dr. Weiss studied at Oberlin College, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, where she was awarded the Ph.D. She has designed and executed thirty stage sets and has taught architectural and planning history at such schools as Berkeley, Manitoba, Wellesley, Dartmouth, and RISD. She has served on the boards of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians. Her recent courses have focused on European architecture, landscape, and urbanism from pre-history through the eighteenth century (in two semesters), modern American urbanism, and Frank Lloyd Wright.