Rachel Leibowitz, PhD

Rachel Leibowitz joined the History Programs Division of the Texas Historical Commission in July 2007. As a staff historian, she prepares nominations to the National Register of Historic Places and reviews federal undertakings under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. She also teaches a graduate seminar, "Cultural Landscape Preservation," at the University of Texas at Austin. Leibowitz currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and is a member of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation; she is organizing the AHLP annual conference, planned for Fort Worth in 2011.

Leibowitz was awarded the first doctoral degree in landscape architecture, with an emphasis in history and theory, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; for her dissertation research on the New Deal-era cultural landscapes of Window Rock, Arizona-the capital of the Navajo Nation-Leibowitz received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the ACLS/Luce Foundation, the Newberry Library, and the American Philosophical Society.  She also holds a Master of Architecture degree, with a thesis in historic preservation, from the University of Illinois, and holds degrees in fine arts from Washington University in St. Louis and Tulane University. She was awarded the 2002 Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship from the Historic American Buildings Survey, for which she researched and wrote the history of the William Allen White House, a property of the Kansas State Historical Society.