Chris Dingwall | Writing | Curating | Teaching


I am an Assistant Professor of Design History in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis, where I am also a faculty affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicty & Equity and in American Culture Studies.

My research is on the history of American and African American cultures at the intersection of material culture, race, and political economy. Right now I'm working on two complementary research projects: Selling Slavery: Race and the Industry of American Culture (for the Slaveries Since Emancipation Series at Cambridge University Press), a history of commercial plantation iconography and the making of the American culture industry during the long wake of slave emancipation; and Black Designers in Chicago (for the University of Chicago Press), a chronicle of African American artists and craftspeople in the American design industry during the twentieth century.


CV // email