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 AMST 205, she sometimes teaches AMST 211 (Technology and American Values), AMST 330 (Critics of American Culture), and a course on American Suburbia. 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.

Hardcore gardener and Internet junkie, David Silver is currently pursuing his masters in American Studies at the University of Maryland, at College Park. His academic interests are dangerously similar to his real life obsessions, and both usually revolve around computers, the Internet, and virtual communities. A former resident of sunny Los Angeles, David now resides in College Park, Maryland where he can walk his dogs without fear of drive-bys.