Faculty

Profile

Jennifer is a writer, educator and communications strategist currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons. From 2016-2021 she served on the faculty in the MFA Products of Design, MA Design Research Writing and Criticism, and BFA Graphic Design and Advertising programs, where she taught courses in design history for writers, design for social value, design and politics, graphic design history, and thesis research and writing. Prior to teaching at SVA, she served as an Adjunct Professor at Parsons from 2008-2012 where she taught Design + Management Seminar 1, Design and Everyday Experience; Design Development; History of Graphic Design; and Global Issues in 21st Century Art and Design. Her research considers the construction of pedagogies that critique the intersections of design and power, primarily through the intersectional lenses of race, gender, ability, and socio-economic status. In Spring 2021 she served as Guest Editor for a special issue of Design Museum Everywhere dedicated to critiquing design in and of policing. Her current book project, The Black Experience in Design, will be published in February 2022 by Allworth Press. Co-edited by six design educators, including Kelly Walters of Parsons School of Design and Anne Berry of Cleveland State University, the book features writings and art by fifty Black educators, designers, artists, and curators reflecting on their own experiences as Black practitioners. In addition to teaching, Jennifer has worked for a number of design and design-adjacent institutions including Pentagram, Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and the AIGA. As museum educator at the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in the 1990s, Jennifer led Art Access II, an initiative designed to increase museum attendance among under-served communities through education and community outreach. She earned her M.Ed. in Communication and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University where her thesis, “Space, Time, and Objects” proposed pedagogies of equity and access in the art history curriculum.