Andrew Wiese
Professor
Office: AL 531
Email: [email protected]
Education
Ph.D., History, Columbia University (1993)
M.Phil., U.S. History and Urban Planning, Columbia University (1990)
B.A., Literature, Science and the Arts, University of Iowa (1987)
Andrew is Professor of U.S. Urban and Environmental History. His interests include suburbanization, the history of housing and planning, race, space and power, and the relationships between place and politics. He is the author of Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the 20th Century (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which won the award for Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association and the John G. Cawelti Prize for Best Book in American Culture Studies from the American Culture Association. He is also the editor, with Becky Nicolaides, of The Suburb Reader (Routledge, 2006, 2016), a volume on the history of American suburbia, which was included on the American Planning Association’s list of 50 ‘essential’ books (2007). These works helped to shift the paradigm in urban-suburban studies, bringing to light the historic diversity of suburban experiences and the central role of suburbanization in 20th – 21st century U.S. history.
His current research explores the role of place-based activism in urban environmental history and relationships among local politics, environmental planning, and social justice in California. The Green City: Environmental Politics and Planning in San Diego since 1960 uses oral history, archival analysis, and participant observation to illuminate key environmental contests in San Diego, a diverse, sprawling, border city in the most biologically rich county in North America that has been at the cutting edge of modern environmental movements.
Professor Wiese teaches courses on urban and environmental history, global environmental problems, and the history of California, emphasizing the application of history to contemporary issues. He is active in community planning, environmental politics and stewardship, reflecting his commitment to the premise that scholars must not only analyze the world, but they should seek to change it.
Book
Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Edited Volume
The Suburb Reader, co-edited with Becky Nicolaides (Routledge, 2006; 2ed 2016)
Journal Articles
“Community Planning, Citizen Action, and Sustainability in a Southern California Edge City: San Diego’s University Community, 2000-2018,” Planning Perspectives, (Routledge) Volume 36, 2021, Issue 3, 495-513.
“Friends of Rose Canyon: The Politics of Place and the Environment in Twenty-First Century San Diego,” California History, 95:3, (Fall, 2018), 2-20.
“‘The Giddy Rise of the Environmentalists:’ Corporate Real Estate Development and Environmental Politics in San Diego, California, 1968-1973,” Environmental History, 19 (Jan, 2014), 28-54.
“Is There a Role for the ‘Hoi-Polloi’ in Planning and Planning History? Thoughts on Class and Planning at the Turn of a New Century,” Journal of Planning History, 1 (August, 2002), 215-19
“Stubborn Diversity: A Commentary on Middle-Class Influence in Working-Class Suburbs, 1900-1940, Journal of Urban History, 27 (March, 2001), 347-54.
“The Other Suburbanites: African American Suburbanization in the North before 1950,” Journal of American History, 85 (March, 1999), 1495-1524. (“Best Scholarly Article in 1999,” Urban History Association; “Best Scholarly Article of 1998-99,” Oral History Association)
“Black Housing, White Finance: African American Housing, Home Ownership and Segregation, Evanston, Illinois, 1910-1940,” Journal of Social History, 33 (Winter, 1999), 429-60.
“The Neighborhood Diversity Debate: Social Change and Ambiguity in Fair Housing since 1968,” Journal of Urban Affairs, 17 (Summer, 1995), 107-29. (Lead Article in Special Issue: “Bringing the City Back In?”)
“Places of Our Own: Suburban Black Towns before 1960,” Journal of Urban History, 19 (May, 1993), 30-54.
“Life on the Other Side of the Tracks: African American Suburbanization in a Domestic
Service Suburb, Evanston, Illinois, 1916-1940,” Locus: A Historical Journal of Regional Perspectives, 5 (May, 1993), 163-84.
Book Chapters
“Suburbanization in the United States after 1945,” with Becky Nicolaides, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, (Oxford University Press, 2017), 1-53.
“African American Suburbanization and Regionalism in the Modern South,” in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, ed., Matt Lassiter and Joe Crespino, (Oxford University Press, 2010). 210-33.
“‘The House I Live In:’ Race, Class and African American Suburban Dreams in the Postwar U.S.,” African American Urban History since World War II, ed., Joe W. Trotter, Jr. and Kenneth Kusmer, (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 160-80.
“African Americans in the Suburban and Rural Fringe,” in Historical Roots of the Urban Crisis: African Americans in the Industrial City, 1900-1950, ed. Henry L. Taylor and Walter Hill (Garland Press, 2000), 145-74.
“We Shall Independent Be: African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim
Space in the U.S.,” ed. Leslie Alexander and Angel D. Nieves (University Press of
Colorado, 2008), 223-50.
Recent Public and Advocacy Writing
“HOLC City Survey, San Diego,” Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, (2023)
Report and Recommendations of the University Community Planning Group on the Community Discussion Draft of the University Community Plan, UCPG, July 11, 2023 (13,000 words)
A Place of Their Own: Chagrin Falls Park, Ohio, 1920-1950, 2ed, (Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Historical Society, 2021)
“Open Space Protection in the University Community: Steps to Protecting the ‘UC Greenbelt,’” prepared for San Diego City Planning Department, 2021
“The CSU and the Death of History: American History and Civic Education at a Crossroads in California,” Council for History and Civic Education, 2019 California AAUP blog, Feb 25, 2019