Robert Benson
Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
Education:
MLA Harvard GSD, 1967
BA Harvard College, 1964
Professional Registration:
Massachusetts (inactive)
Major Emphases:
• Landscape Site Design Theory and Process
• Landscape Architecture History (California Missions and Early Caribbean)
• Literary Landscapes (Jane Austen and Science Fiction)
• Virtual Realities in Film and Design
Publications and Activities:
Manuscript scholarly work under preparation: Jane Austen and the Art of the Natural in Her Six Novels (First draft complete and under revision)
Manuscript novel completed and awaiting revision:
The Caribbean Connection - A Novel in Three Parts:
Letters from the Caribbean; A Distant Cousin; The Circle of Friends
Western society for 18th Century Studies, 2017 – University of California, Santa Barbara
Two Aliens in Alien Landscapes, or, “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this!.”
(Comparative study of first English novel, Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719) and contemporary film, The Martian (James Cameron, 2015)
Western Society for 18th Century Studies, 2016 – University of California, Riverside
“Jane Austen” in Jamaica: An Unexpected Literary Encounter in a Foreign Landscape
American Society for 18th Century Studies (National Meeting), 2015, Los Angeles
Ladies in Waiting: Cultural Sustainability and Three Englishwomen In a Foreign Society and Landscape
Western Society for18th Century Studies, 2015 – California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Missions Impossible - Physical and Cultural Sustainability Then and Now in Two Spanish Colonia Communities- Mission San Gabriel and Mission San Luis Obispo
7th Annual International Maroon Conference, Port Antonio, Jamaica – 2015. Survival Over an Open Fire, or, Maroon is Not a Color: Physical and Cultural Sustainability in the Maroon a Community of Fugitive Slaves in Colonial Jamaica
Awards:
American Institute of Architects National Education Honors Award, 1988 (for “Writing in the Design Curriculum”)
City of Columbus, OH - “City Beautiful” Award,
Price Avenue Mini-Park, Victorian Village Historic District
Columbus Recreation and Parks Department