Andrew Sandoval-Strausz

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He was born in New York City, received his B.A. at Columbia, and went on to the University of Chicago for his Ph.D. He teaches courses in urban landscapes, spatial theory, sociability, and immigration. He has served on the Urban History Association’s board since 2008 and joined the editorial board of the Journal of Urban History in 2009. He is also the book review editor of Buildings & Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

His first book, Hotel: An American History (Yale University Press, 2007), was awarded the 2008 American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch Book Prize and was named a Best Book of 2007 by Library Journal. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the New-York Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Huntington Library, and the Harvard Business School.

His new book project, Latino Landscapes, involves a larger-scale application of the epistemology of his first book: the idea that human beings reveal themselves most clearly through their built environment, and that people’s homes, neighborhoods, places of work and play, and use of public space must be taken as seriously as textual sources. The logic behind Latino Landscapes is that in order to understand modern U.S. cities, we must begin by analyzing the architecture and spatial practices of people who have moved into cities throughout the Americas.