Kirin Makker
Kirin J MakkerProfessor of American Studies
Joined faculty in 2008
Ph.D., Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts Amherst
M.Arch., University of Maryland College Park
M.A., English Language and Literature, University of Massachusetts Amherst
B.A., English Language and Literature, minor in history, University of Texas Austin
Contact Information
Scholarly Interest
Kirin Makker is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist whose research integrates visual media, material practice, and installation. Her work employs material-based storytelling and visual methodologies to examine power, spatial production, and the social construction of space. Her current research engages material culture and medical misogyny, women’s histories in planning and design, and the development of ecological protections.
Her arts-based research methodology uses hand drawing, cyanotype, watercolor, sewing, and book arts as analytic and historiographic tools. Makker is a Professor of American Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where she teaches courses in material-based storytelling that use creative, visual and tactile practices to examine inequality, amplify marginalized voices, and investigate social justice through experiential learning.
Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Consortium for Faculty Diversity, Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, Winterthur Museum and Library, Hagley Museum, and Baylor University. Her participatory research project, Womb Chair Speaks, has been exhibited at the Winterthur Museum of Decorative Arts, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria.
Her peer-reviewed scholarship has been published in Art Journal, The Journal of Planning History, and Landscape Journal, and her work has also appeared in Dwell. Her monograph, Village Improvement in America, 1840–1930, was published by the Library of American Landscape History in 2025.
Her arts-based research methodology uses hand drawing, cyanotype, watercolor, sewing, and book arts as analytic and historiographic tools. Makker is a Professor of American Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where she teaches courses in material-based storytelling that use creative, visual and tactile practices to examine inequality, amplify marginalized voices, and investigate social justice through experiential learning.
Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Consortium for Faculty Diversity, Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, Winterthur Museum and Library, Hagley Museum, and Baylor University. Her participatory research project, Womb Chair Speaks, has been exhibited at the Winterthur Museum of Decorative Arts, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria.
Her peer-reviewed scholarship has been published in Art Journal, The Journal of Planning History, and Landscape Journal, and her work has also appeared in Dwell. Her monograph, Village Improvement in America, 1840–1930, was published by the Library of American Landscape History in 2025.