Rate My Professor Andrew Wiese

Andrew Wiese is Professor Emeritus of U.S. Urban and Environmental History in the History Department at San Diego State University, holding a Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP) position and teaching fall semesters through 2029. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1993, an M.Phil. in U.S. History and Urban Planning in 1990, and a B.A. in Literature, Science, and the Arts from the University of Iowa in 1987. Previously serving as Chair of the History Department in the College of Arts and Letters, Wiese's research specializations include suburbanization, the history of housing and planning, race, space and power, and relationships between place and politics. He teaches courses on urban and environmental history, global environmental problems, and California history, emphasizing history's application to contemporary issues.

Wiese authored Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which won the Urban History Association's Best Book in North American Urban History award and the American Culture Association's John G. Cawelti Prize for Best Book in American Culture Studies. He co-edited The Suburb Reader with Becky Nicolaides (Routledge, 2006; second edition 2016), selected for the American Planning Association's list of 50 essential books in 2007. These publications have transformed urban-suburban studies by revealing the diversity of suburban experiences and suburbanization's central role in 20th- and 21st-century U.S. history. Notable articles include “The Other Suburbanites: African American Suburbanization in the North before 1950” (Journal of American History, 1999), awarded by the Urban History Association and Oral History Association. Recent works feature “Community Planning, Citizen Action, and Sustainability in a Southern California Edge City” (Planning Perspectives, 2023). His ongoing book project, The Green City: Environmental Politics and Planning in San Diego since 1960, investigates urban environmental history through oral histories and archives. Wiese actively participates in community planning, environmental politics, and stewardship in San Diego.