Current Students in History of Art
Shira Backer
Modern and Contemporary Art
Shira is a third-year student completing an M.A. thesis on the ceramics
of Sterling Ruby, a contemporary, Los Angeles-based artist who also
works in collage and video, along with other sculptural media. The
thesis explores the relationship of a recent series of sculptures,
"Basin Theology," to parts of Ruby's oeuvre that function as social
critique in more obvious ways. Shira received her B.A. in Philosophy
from Barnard College, and spent a year working in the education
department of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. In
2011-2012, she is serving as the Graduate Assistant in Special
Collections at Bryn Mawr.
Alexander P. Brey
Early Medieval Art and Architecture
Alex is a PhD student researching artistic exchange in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Middle East. He received his B.A. in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Vassar College in 2008, and his M.A. in the History of Art from Bryn Mawr College in 2011. In addition to an internship in the Department of European Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Alex has worked on excavations of Late Antique and Medieval sites in Scotland, Jordan, and Israel, and participated in on-site research seminars in Turkey (Cappadocia) and Uzbekistan. He has presented research at UPenn's annual Medievalists @ Penn conference, George Washington University's Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, and Bryn Mawr's Biennial Graduate Group Symposium. He is currently representing the students of the GSAS on the Bryn Mawr College Diversity Council, and co-hosts the infamous biannual Medieval and Renaissance Studies tea with Maeve Doyle.
Mark Anthony Castro
Spanish and Spanish Colonial Art
Mark is a PhD candidate working with Professor Gridley McKim-Smith. His dissertation will examine painting cycles depicting the life of Saint Francis produced for Franciscan Institutions in New Spain, in particular the series produced by the painter Cristóbal de Villalpando for the Franciscan Convent in Antigua, Guatemala. Mark received his B.A. in Archaeology and Studio Art from Hamilton College in 2005, and his M.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 2010. Since the fall of 2005 he has been an Exhibition Coordinator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Maeve Doyle
Medieval Art
Maeve is a PhD candidate specializing in book arts of the later Middle Ages. Maeve received her A.B. in 2007 from Vassar College and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr in 2009. Her dissertation, advised by Dale Kinney, addresses owner portraits in devotional manuscripts produced around 1300 across northern France. This project continues work begun in her Master’s thesis, a study of the gendered representation and reception of owner portraits and other marginal imagery in the Aspremont-Kievraing Psalter-Hours (ca. 1300). Maeve has presented her research at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and at conferences at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Bristol. At Bryn Mawr she has been a TA in the History of Art department and has participated in the organization of two Graduate Group Symposia. In the current academic year (2011-2012), Maeve is conducting dissertation research in France with the support of a Fulbright grant.
Matthew C. Feliz
Modern and Contemporary Art
Matthew is a seventh-year student working with Professor Lisa Saltzman. His dissertation examines the art practice of Christian Marclay, an artist working across a variety of media that includes installation, performance, sound and video. Matthew received his B.A. in Spanish from Haverford College in 1998 and his M.A. in Art History from Bryn Mawr in 2008. From 2003-2006, he worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of European Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2007 Matthew received an NEH Curatorial Internship for which he returned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a Curatorial Fellow working on the exhibition, Renoir Landscapes. Matthew also worked in the Special Collections and Visual Resources Center at Bryn Mawr College, cataloguing a collection of optical devices. While at Bryn Mawr Matthew has also served as a Teaching Assistant.
Lori Anne Felton
German and Austrian Modernism
Lori is a PhD candidate in the History of Art, working with Professor Christiane Hertel. Her dissertation focuses on Egon Schiele's portraiture production, an interest that continues from her Master's thesis, which examined the theme of the doppelgänger within some of Schiele's self-portraits. Lori received her B.A. in Liberal Studies from American University in 2005 and her M.A. in Art History from Bryn Mawr College in 2010. Lori served as an Assistant Fellowships Adviser from 2008-2010 and as a Teaching Assistant for the Art History department in the fall of 2010. She served on the organizing committee for the biennial Graduate Group Symposium in 2009, and has been a member of the Graduate Student Mentoring Program since its inception in 2009. She presented her research at the German Studies Association conference in September 2011. She is currently conducting dissertation research in Vienna on a Fulbright grant.
Johanna Gosse
Modern and Contemporary Art, Film, New Media
Johanna Gosse is a fifth-year PhD candidate working with Professor Homay King. Her dissertation examines the films of San Francisco-based artist Bruce Conner. She received her B.A. in Art History from Barnard College in 2005, and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr in 2009. Johanna served as a teaching assistant for the Program in Film Studies from fall 2010 through fall 2011, and held an NEH Curatorial Fellowship from 2009 through 2010. In 2012, Johanna will present papers at the College Art Association Conference and the IFA-Frick Symposium on the History of Art. She has also presented at the “Re-Viewing Black Mountain College Conference” at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s annual CLTC conference. Publications include “From Art to Experience: The Porous Philosophy of Ray Johnson,” in the fall 2011 issue of the Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, and an essay on the role of politics in contemporary art in the winter 2010 issue of Radical History Review.
Emily Lina Grant
German and Russian Modernism
Lina is a second-year graduate student, writing her Masters thesis on Richard Wagner's notion of the 'gesamtkunstwerk', or the total work of art, and the legacy of the term in early Russian and German painting circles. In 2009 Lina received her B.A. in Art History from the University of California, San Diego. She has presented papers at two conferences—at the annual symposium of Art Historians of Southern California (AHSC) at Occidental College, and at the Case Art History Symposium at Case Western University in Cleveland. In the summer of 2009, she completed the Helena Rubinstein Summer Internship Program in the Archives department at MoMA. In the 2011-2012 academic year, she is serving as the History of Art student representative, and has been working in the Visual Resources Center at Bryn Mawr College since fall 2010.
Amy Elin Haavik-MacKinnon
Modern and Contemporary Art
Amy is a PhD candidate working with Professor Lisa Saltzman. Her dissertation examines issues of identity as expressed in art in the East End of London since World War II. Amy received her B.A. in Art History from Vassar College and M.A. from the University of Manchester in England where she studied with Professor Andrew Causey. She has served as a teaching assistant at Bryn Mawr in the Cities, Film and History of Art departments. Amy has presented her research at the Courtauld Institute in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Robin Kim
Romanesque Art and Architecture
Robin is a Ph.D. candidate in history of art researching Romanesque
architecture in Northern Spain, specifically in the region of Navarra.
The Santo Sepulchro in Torres del Río and Santa María de Eunate are the
case studies of her dissertation. She holds a Master's degree from
Bryn Mawr College, with a concentration on film studies. Prior to
attending Bryn Mawr College, Robin received a Master's degree from the Courtauld Institute in London in
Medieval Art and Architecture, where her interests in medieval art
history became more centered on architecture. Robin received her B.A. from the
University of Chicago.
Lisa Kohn
Justinne Lake-Jedzinak
Anna-Marie Moblard Meier
19th and 20th century Austrian and German Art
Anna received her B.A. in German Literature and Studio Art from Reed College. Before beginning her graduate studies in the History of Art at Bryn Mawr, she continued her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, completing her M.F.A in 2011. Her main research interest are 19th and 20th century German and Austrian art, philosophy and aesthetics.
Melissa J. Meier
Carrie M. Robbins
Modern and Contemporary Art, Photography
Carrie is a sixth-year student working with Professor Steven Z. Levine. Her dissertation considers the intersections of trompe l’oeil painting and photography practices, and their respective reception histories. She received her B.A. in Art History from Grinnell College in 2002 and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 2008. In 2011 Carrie organized Double Take: Selected Views from the Photography Collection at Bryn Mawr College, 1860s – Present, exhibiting 75 of the 1,000 photographs she catalogued during a previous year’s graduate assistantship and writing the principal essay for the exhibition’s corresponding catalog. She has been a Teaching Assistant for Professors Homay King and Steven Levine, as well as a research assistant for Professor Barbara Miller Lane. Carrie also co-chaired the 7th Biennial Graduate Student Symposium, "Thievery: The Anxiety of Influence and Appropriation," at Bryn Mawr in December 2009. She has presented papers at the Frick Collection, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and California State University in Sacramento.
Katherine Rochester
Modern and Contemporary Art
Katherine is a second-year M.A. candidate working with Professor Lisa Saltzman. Her M.A. thesis traces the recurrence of the shadow as a theme in Paul Chan’s work, with the aim of exploring the ways in which Chan deploys the shadow as a zone of embodied resistance rooted in the materiality of language. Katherine received her B.A. from Grinnell College in 2006. After graduating, Katherine worked in the Education department at the Walker Art Center for two years, first as an intern and then as a Fellow. From 2008 – 2010 Katherine worked as the Program Manager at The Soap Factory, a contemporary art space in Minneapolis, where she curated a number of exhibitions including three film festivals and a festival of performance art. After a summer spent working as a curatorial intern on the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Katherine is now a curatorial research assistant to Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Katherine has a weekly arts column in the Philadelphia Weekly and is a frequent contributor to Artforum.com, Art in America, and Title Magazine.
Nathaneal Roesch
Modern and Contemporary Art
Nathanael is second-year student researching the representation of sport in contemporary art. Other interests include the histories of newer media (photography, television, digital) and 20th-century American art. Nathanael received his B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Bowling Green State University in 2002; he received his M.A. in Art History from the University of Georgia in 2009. In the summer of 2011, Nathanael served as Curatorial Assistant on the exhibition Double Take at Bryn Mawr College.
Shannon Steiner
Late Antique and Byzantine Art
Shannon is a first-year student working with Professor Alicia Walker. She earned a B.A. in Art History in 2009 from Temple University and completed her M.A. in 2011 at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research in the past has focused on the pilgrimage arts of seventh-century Syria through a reevaluation of their reception and of their so-called "magical" contexts. Her current interests include portable objects from the Early Byzantine period, particularly the material culture of relics and saint cults as they pertain to questions of gender and devotional behavior. She has presented her work at the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, as well as the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
Angelique Wille
Early Netherlandish Painting
Angélique is a PhD student specializing in 15th century Netherlandish painting under the guidance of Professor Christiane Hertel. Her dissertation considers the different types of copying used in early Flemish painting workshops and how they were used to quickly produce devotional objects for sale. Angélique received her B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2006 and her M.A. from Bryn Mawr in 2009. She has worked as a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Special Collections, where she co-curated "Darwin’s Ancestors: Tracing the Origins of the ‘Origin of Species’", and as the Curatorial Assistant in the Art and Artifact Collections. She received the 2011-2012 Slifka Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is training in an interdisciplinary approach –combining art historical research and technical examination of the museum’s Netherlandish paintings.
Amalia Wojciechowski
Prints and Printmaking
Amalia is a first-year M.A. candidate specializing in prints and printmaking. Amalia received her B.A in History, with a minor in Art History from Oberlin College in 2009. Amalia spent her junior year abroad, studying in Cordoba, Spain at the Universidad de Cordoba, and in Rome through the John Felice Rome Center program out of Loyola University of Chicago. In the winter of 2008, she participated in the Practicum in Museum Education at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, allowing her to become part of the student docent corps for the rest of her three years at Oberlin College. In the summer of 2009, she worked as the Educational Intern, assisting the Curator of Education at the Allen, publishing teaching guides to the collection and exhibitions, as well as a podcast on works in the permanent collection.
