About

Jessica Sewell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning and serves as Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the relationships between gender and architecture, urban space, and material culture. She has authored the book Exploring Gender in Vernacular Architecture, which examines how gender ideology influences the design, construction, and use of spaces, including single-gender, mixed-gender, and queer spaces, and explores research methods for observing gendered experiences. Her first book, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915, investigates how gendered public spaces were imagined, built, and used during that period, highlighting the interdependence between women's everyday lives, urban cultural landscapes, and gender ideology. Her current research explores the concept of men in private space, focusing on the bachelor pad as a site of masculine fantasy and urban counterpoint to suburban homes in the 1950s-60s United States. Additionally, she is working on a collaborative book about architect and urbanist Giancarlo de Carlo and a project on the Great Valley of the Appalachians. Sewell authored the app Exploring Suzhou, a cultural landscapes tour of the Chinese city of Suzhou, which has been used to enrich teaching at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and is the basis for a digital project supported by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from various institutions, including the Institute for Advanced Study, the Humanities Institute at Boston University, the Huntington Library, and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Research topics

• History
• Sociology
• Art
• Art history
• Aesthetics

Selected publications

• Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism, by Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy

  Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians · 2026-05-19

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• Exploring Gender in Vernacular Architecture

  University of Tennessee Press eBooks · 2024-12-05

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• Women

  2022-11-28

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  Women's life experiences have been greatly affected by the assumptions that (largely male) planners have made, most notably (a) the belief that domestic life and waged work life are and should be separate, (b) the general discounting of feminized labor, and (c) the use of the male-headed nuclear family as a norm. Women have pushed back, claiming public space as shoppers, workers, and citizens, and have fought to make cities more sanitary, beautiful, convenient, and safe. In the late 1800s, women were increasingly active participants in the public sphere and public space, fighting for the vote, founding reform organizations, shopping downtown, and going to work in shops and offices. In the 20th century, women expanded their roles as voters and workers, but found the interconnected complexity of their domestic and working lives ignored by planning which used zoning in ways that made it difficult to balance work and home, a move that culminated in the growth of the suburbs in the post-World War II era. Beginning in the 1960s, a new wave of feminism pushed back against sexist assumptions, and eventually adopted an intersectional lens, while the dogma of planning was being challenged more broadly. However, even as planning has begun to embrace complexity and participation, women's needs and voices have remained marginalized.

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• Public Space in North American Cities

  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History · 2018-11-20

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  Abstract From 1800 to 2000, cities grew enormously, and saw an expansion of public spaces to serve the varied needs of a diverse population living in ever more cramped and urban circumstances. While a wide range of commercial semipublic spaces became common in the late 19th century, parks and streets were the best examples of truly public spaces with full freedom of access. Changes in the design and management of streets, sidewalks, squares, parks, and plazas during this period reflect changing ideas about the purpose of public space and how it should be used. Streets shifted from being used for a wide range of activities, including vending, playing games, and storing goods, to becoming increasingly specialized spaces of movement, designed and managed by the early twentieth century for automobile traffic. Sidewalks, which in the early nineteenth century were paid for and liberally used by adjacent businesses, were similarly specialized as spaces of pedestrian movement. However, the tradition of using streets and sidewalks as a space of public celebration and public speech remained strong throughout the period. During parades and protests, streets and sidewalks were temporarily remade as spaces of the performance of the public, and the daily activities of circulation and commerce were set aside. In 1800, the main open public spaces in cities were public squares or commons, often used for militia training and public celebration. In the second half of the 19th century, these were augmented by large picturesque parks. Designed as an antidote to urbanity, these parks served the public as a place for leisure, redefining public space as a polite leisure amenity, rather than a place for people to congregate as a public. The addition of playgrounds, recreational spaces, and public plazas in the 20th century served both the physical and mental health of the public. In the late 20th century, responding to neoliberal ideas and urban fiscal crises, the ownership and management of public parks and plazas was increasingly privatized, further challenging public accessibility.

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• Maureen A. Flanagan, Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018. 327pp. 14 halftones, 6 maps. $104.50 hbk. $37.95 pbk. $37.95 ebk.

  Urban History · 2018-12-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Maureen A. Flanagan, Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018. 327pp. 14 halftones, 6 maps. $37.95 ebk. - Volume 46 Issue 1

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• Review: A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. by Marta Gutman

  Pacific Historical Review · 2016-04-26

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  Book Review| May 01 2016 Review: A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. by Marta Gutman A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. By Marta Gutman. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2014. xxi + 454 pp. $45 cloth) Jessica Ellen Sewell Jessica Ellen Sewell University of Virginia Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2016) 85 (2): 316–317. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2016.85.2.316 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jessica Ellen Sewell; Review: A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. by Marta Gutman. Pacific Historical Review 1 May 2016; 85 (2): 316–317. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2016.85.2.316 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2016 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

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• Performing Masculinity Through Objects in Postwar America

  2014-01-01 · 1 citations

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• Errands

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2011-01-24

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  Abstract This chapter looks at women's various domestic errands, particularly shopping. The chapter looks specifically at downtown shopping districts, grocery stores, and local main streets. In these landscapes, women from the two classes were able to create varied experiences. At times, these varied experiences led to conflicts and discrepancies, for instance, how shopping ignited conflicts between the store’s workforce and the middle-class shoppers. Such shopping conflicts were usually dependent to these factors: class backgrounds, dress codes, and store’s architectural designs.

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• Spectacles and Amusements

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2011-01-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter discusses how women were viewed in public gatherings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter considers public spaces in theaters, commercial shops, and parades. The theater as a public space confronts the following issues: why did theater’s seat arrangements only cater to men and elite women? How was this issue resolved in the twentieth century? The notion of the public gathering confronts the following issues: how did parades consider civic order? What was the underlying principle of women’s participation in these celebrations?

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• Sidewalks and Streetcars

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2011-01-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines women’s behavior on the streets from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. During the late nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, we see a significant increase in women’s use of public transport as a result of city-wide expansions and neighborhood gaps. Women, when out in public, were supposed to be just about visible to strangers yet more prominently visible towards acquaintances. This type of attitude connotes middle class status. The chapter presents how women were classified into two: visible working-class women and discreet middle-class women.

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Frequent coauthors

• Andrew Johnston

  Queen's University Belfast

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellowship from The Institute for Advanced Study
• Fellowship from the Humanities Institute at Boston Universit…
• Fellowship from the Huntington Library
• Fellowship from the Bancroft Library of the University of Ca…