Travis San Pedro

Travis San Pedro received his master's in American Studies with a focus in material culture and built environments from Yale University. He received his bachelor's degree in English from Rice University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, Hanszen Academic Fellow Emeritus, with English Honors. In the summer of 2011, San Pedro participated in the Chipstone Object Lab through the Chipstone Foundation. His research interests include cultural constructs and its application to objects, manufacturing authenticity, definition of identity/social status through consumption, maintenance of separate residential/recreational boundaries through marketing, influence of cultural iconography on self-conscious design/purchasing, gendering of objects, utilization of bodily and spatial adornment to navigate social relations, design’s influence on social ills/reverberations on the socio-physical landscape, use of demographics to shape urban planning and architecture, artificial environments, manipulation of the natural environment, performativity, and the collective versus individual identity. He collects antique quilts and afghans, midcentury modern drinking glasses, and Rice and Yale paraphernalia.