The Women Who Founded RISD: "What a beginning is worth" The Women's Centennial Committee of Rhode Island and the Founding of RISD, 1875-1877 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781542343671)

Dr. Nancy Austin is a design historian, educator, and leadership coach based in Rhode Island. From 1985- to 2008, she taught critical histories of art and industrial design at RISD, Yale, and WPI, before transitioning in 2009 to employment as a consultant and empowerment coach. Nancy continues to contribute to and collaborate with a broad range of non-profit cultural institutions and initiatives. As a scholar, Dr. Austin's work considers the relationship between art and design. A particular focus is how women understood design as a possible vehicle for the pursuit of economic independence and personal liberty in the face of cultural and technological change. Since the early 1990, she has given conference papers about and published scholarship on the history of RISD and Rhode Island's art world. She contributed "Educating American Designers for Industry, 1853--1903," to The Cultivation of American Artists: Education and the Commerce of Art in 19th--century America, ed. Diana Korzenik. (American Antiquarian Society, 1997). She received her Ph.D. from Brown University with a thesis on the entrepreneurial women who founded RISD.