People
Program Administration
Dianne Harris - Director
Fall 2009 – Letter from the Director (click here to read)
Dianne Harris began her appointment as IPRH Director in fall 2008. She is also Professor of Landscape Architecture, with appointments in Architecture, Art History, and History.
Professor Harris received her B.A. in Landscape Architecture, her Masters Degree in Architecture, and her Ph.D. in Architecture/History of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the U of I faculty in 1996.
She is the author of The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape and Representation in 18th-Century Lombardy (2003; awarded the Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2006), Maybeck’s Landscapes: Drawing in Nature (2005), and numerous other edited volumes, book chapters, and articles. Her research areas include architectural history in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries; architecture, urbanism, and landscape of the Italian Peninsula, 1600-1800; history of western landscapes, 1400-present; spatial theories of race and critical race theory; and domestic space in the postwar United States.
Professor Harris is the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants, and awards. She was an IPRH Faculty Fellow during the 2004-05 academic year, and is a past member of the IPRH Advisory Committee. She currently serves as First Vice-President of the Society of Architectural Historians.
For more information about Dianne Harris, click visit her faculty profile on the Department of Landscape Architecture website.
Christine Catanzarite - Senior Associate Director
Fall 2009 – Letter from the Senior Associate Director (click here to read)
Christine Catanzarite joined the IPRH as Associate Director in 1997, when the program was established.
She also has an appointment in the Unit for Cinema Studies, where she teaches courses on film history, theory, and criticism, with an emphasis on popular American film. Her areas of specialization include the classic Hollywood studio system, the musical film and genre hybridity, censorship and the rating system, and the history of popular rituals (including the Academy Awards and the high school prom).
She is the founder and organizer of the IPRH Film Series, which debuted in fall 2000, and has spoken and written about a wide variety of film-related topics. She has organized panel discussions at the Roger Ebert Film Festival; has collaborated with the Tournées French Film Festival, among many others; and has served as guest curator of two exhibits at the Krannert Art Museum – one on representations of women in movie advertising, and the other on set design in Hollywood film of the 1940s.
Prior to coming to the U of I, she was an assistant professor of film studies, television, and theater at Illinois State University. She received her Ph.D. in American Culture Studies and her M.A. in Popular Culture from the Center for the Study of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University.