Teaching
I teach courses on the art and visual culture of the long 19th century. Courses I have developed include:
How did medical practices like dissection shape artistic education and practice? How and why have physicians visually represented medical research? How have visual representations of the body shifted understandings of race, gender, health, and ability? This course centers intersections of art and medicine from the early modern period to the present to disentangle how medical understandings of the body filter into artistic production and popular thought and vice versa.
What constitutes the animal, and what role does representation play in shaping responses to this question? How and why have artists across time and place deployed animals as visual signs? How did the collection of animal specimens in the West both depend on and sustain networks of imperialism? And how and why do scientists picture animals? This course poses the above questions, investigating the space between animal studies and art history.
This course asserts that histories of design, decorative arts, and material culture in Europe and the United States reveal critical—and even inexorable—histories of imperialism, spotlighting topics such as exchange, violence, migration, appropriation, materiality, and indigenous agency. While objects like porcelain bowls, tea cups, salt cellars, or yards of textile have long been treated as benign indicators of style and status, this course asks students to think through these objects’ roles as agents of empire.