Kathleen Pierce

Kathleen Pierce is assistant professor of art history in the Department of Art at Smith College. Pierce received her Ph.D. in art history from Rutgers University. Her research explores intersections of art and medicine in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French empire, attending closely to intersections of gender, race, health, and power. She was named an ACLS fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. Her work has previously been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University. Her writing has appeared in venues such as Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Medical History, Nursing Clio, and Synapsis: a Health Humanities Journal.

At Smith College, Pierce teaches courses on the art and visual culture of the long 19th century. Topics have included the intersection of art and medicine, race and gender in the history of photography, and the intersection of histories of imperialism and design in the Europe and the United States. Her pedagogy emphasizes how objects and images construct 19th-century understandings of race, gender, health, and power, and she encourages students to recognize how this thinking continues to permeate contemporary culture.