Mary Corbin Sies is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies, an affiliate faculty member of the Women's Studies Program, and Acting Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. A specialist in material culture studies, she is an expert in the social, cultural, architectural, and planning history of American suburbia. In addition to HONR 159J (American Suburbia), she sometimes teaches AMST 211 (Technology and American Values), AMST 330 (Critics of American Culture), and AMST 450 (Senior Seminar). In real life she is a sports fanatic, lover of the great outdoors, and intrepid explorer in search of obscure and remote architectural sites. She resides in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband spend their time serving their cat, Ollie, and fashioning pointed artifacts to keep the alligators out of their suburban backyard.

Greetings from Psyche A. Williams a doctoral student in AMST who also received her MA from the Department in December. Now to move away from the 3rd person....I am studying how African-American women are represented in museum exhibitions and hope to create a virtual ex for my dissertation. I will be inundated with museum stuff this semester so by the end I might qualify as a semi-guru. In my other life I like, no love, watching t.v. and reading mysteries (especially the scary suspenseful ones). Have a great semester.