Catherine Boland Erkkila is an architectural historian specializing in American cultural landscapes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work has received several awards, including the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, a Newberry Library fellowship, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2016 Bishir Prize. She previously worked as the managing editor of SAH Archipedia and taught at Rutgers University.

Erkkila’s most important contribution lies in the way she brings together official and vernacular buildings to reveal larger social meanings. As rates of global migration continue to increase and debates rage about American immigration policy and enforcement, it is more important than ever to make sense of this country’s migration history and its spaces of migration. Erkkila’s model offers a way forward.

Catherine Boland Erkkila is an architectural historian specializing in American cultural landscapes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work has received several awards, including the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, a Newberry Library fellowship, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2016 Bishir Prize. She previously worked as the managing editor of SAH Archipedia and taught at Rutgers University.

Erkkila’s most important contribution lies in the way she brings together official and vernacular buildings to reveal larger social meanings. As rates of global migration continue to increase and debates rage about American immigration policy and enforcement, it is more important than ever to make sense of this country’s migration history and its spaces of migration. Erkkila’s model offers a way forward.

Catherine Boland Erkkila is an architectural historian specializing in American cultural landscapes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work has received several awards, including the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, a Newberry Library fellowship, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2016 Bishir Prize. She previously worked as the managing editor of SAH Archipedia and taught at Rutgers University.

Erkkila’s most important contribution lies in the way she brings together official and vernacular buildings to reveal larger social meanings. As rates of global migration continue to increase and debates rage about American immigration policy and enforcement, it is more important than ever to make sense of this country’s migration history and its spaces of migration. Erkkila’s model offers a way forward.