Yuriko Saito is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Saito worked at the faculty at RISD from 1981 to 2018 and was the head of the Special Studies department from 1989 to 1992. Saito was born in raised in Sapporo, Japan and attended International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for graduate school and received a PhD in Philosophy with a minor in Japanese literature in 1983. Saito received the RISD Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1999. She serves on the editorial board for Environmental Aesthetics, is Editor of the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics, is an editorial consultant for The British Journal of Aesthetics, and was a trustee member for the American Society for Aesthetics. She has many publications in the fields of everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and Japanese aesthetics, and has written and reviewed numerous book chapters. A relevant book publication, Everyday Aesthetics was released in 2008 by Oxford University Press, followed by Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making, which earned her the Outstanding Mongraph Prize by the American Society for Aesthetics in 2018. She has presented at University of Houston, Babson College, Baruch College, University of Montana at Missoula, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, University of Texas at Austin, as well as at various locations in the U.S., Japan, and Finland. In 2020 she was the Richard Wollheim Lecturer at the BSA Annual Conference. Saito currently resides in Rhode Island with her family.
