Wesleyan portrait of Joseph M. Siry

Joseph M. Siry

Co-Coordinator, Urban Studies

Boger Hall Room 302, 41 Wyllys Avenue
860-685-3147

Professor of Art History

Boger Hall Room 302, 41 Wyllys Avenue
860-685-3147

Kenan Professor of the Humanities

Boger Hall Room 302, 41 Wyllys Avenue
860-685-3147

jsiry@wesleyan.edu

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BA Princeton University
MAA Wesleyan University
MAR University of Pennsylvania
PHD Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Joseph M. Siry

Joseph M. Siry is professor of modern architectural history. His books are Carson Pirie Scott: Louis Sullivan and the Chicago Department Store (Chicago, 1988); Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion (Cambridge, 1996); The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City (Chicago, 2002), which won the 2003 Society of Architectural Historians' Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for best book by a North American scholar; Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture (Chicago, 2012), a finalist for a 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Visual Arts category; and Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021).  He has also published book chapters, and articles in scholarly journals, including the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Art Bulletin, the first of which won College Art Association's 1991 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for the outstanding article by a younger scholar. He was given Wesleyan's Binswanger Award for Teaching Excellence in 1994 and 2019, and the 2015 Wright Spirit Award, Professional Category, from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in recognition of his scholarship on Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture.  In 2018 he was an inaugural winner of the Wesleyan Prize for Faculty Excellence in Research.  His work has been funded by the N.E.H., the Getty Research Institute, the Mellon Foundation, and the Graham Foundation. He served as Vice Chair of the Wesleyan Faculty (2022–23) and Chair (2023–24).

Academic Affiliations

Office Hours

Spring 2025: Mon., Wed., 4:30–5:30 p.m.; Fri., 10:00 a.m.–12 noon. Please make an appointment via e-mail for an in-person or Zoom office visit.
 

Courses

Spring 2025
ARHA 248 - 01
Frank Lloyd Wright: Myth/Fact

ARHA 248 - AU01
Frank Lloyd Wright: Myth/Fact

ARHA 364 - 01
Architecture: Historiography

Fall 2025
ARHA 246 - 01
America Architecture 1770-1914

ARHA 258 - 01
Contemporary Architecture