The AAHVS department had a significant presence at the College Art Association’s annual conference in Washington, DC, February 3-6, 2016.

Prof. Richard Powell at CAA with current and former students.

As mentioned in a previous NewsByte Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History and Dean of Humanities, was named the College Art Association’s 2016 Distinguished Scholar. A specialist in American art, African American art, and theories of race and representation, Powell was honored during a special session at the CAA conference in Washington, DC.

Many of our faculty, graduate students, and alumni organized sessions or presented papers in other sessions and panels.

Caroline Bruzelius, Anne M. Cogan Professor of Art History, and Hannah Jacobs, Wired! multimedia specialist, presented "Demonstration: Using a Neatline Syllabus in the Introductory Art History Survey,” in the session A Signature Pedagogy for Art History in the Twenty-First Century.

Jasmine Nichole Cobb, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and Art, Art History & Visual Studies, discussed “Afro Modern: Natural Hair Photography, 1965 to 2015,” in Picturing Black Power in American Visual Culture, a panel organized by Jo-Ann Morgan, Western Illinois University.




Neil McWilliam, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Art History, presented “Beyond Cézanne: Joachim Gasquet and the Contradictions of Cultural Nationalism,” in the session The Modernities of French Art and Its History, 1780 to the Present, chaired by Natalie A Adamson, University of St. Andrews, and Richard Taws, University College London.




Victoria Szabo, associate research professor of visual studies and new media, organized an open forum session on Digital Cultural Heritage as Public Humanities Collaboration that featured Caroline Bruzelius, Anne M. Cogan Professor of Art History, showing the “The Kingdom of Sicily Project,” and Nevio Danelon, postdoc in the DiG Lab, presenting “The Regium Lepidi Project.” Mark Olson, Cordelia and William Laverack Family Assistant Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, was the respondent. The full slate of participants and project info is here: http://sites.duke.edu/digitalculturalheritage/



Szabo also co-organized a New Media Caucus session entitled Procedural Art: Game Platforms for Creative Expression. This session focused on the theory and practical use of games in art and social activism, as well as the challenges of teaching and evaluating non-traditional forms of academic and artistic work. The proceedings of our session will be published in a special issue of the Media-N journal. http://www.newmediacaucus.org/events/



Chiara di Stefano, Nicola Brussa, Linda Condotta (IUAV, Venezia) Retrospective of Édouard Manet, French Pavilion, Venice Biennale 1934. Program: 3dsMax.

Doctoral student Laura Moure Cecchini organized the session Between the Ephemeral and the Virtual: Reactivating Art Installations through Digital Reconstructions, with Chiara DiStafano, Università Iuav di Venezia. Kristin Huffman Lanzoni, instructor in Art, Art History & Visual Studies, was the respondent.




Doctoral student Kathryn Desplanque presented "Potshot Pastimes: The Cahier des Charges in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris" in the session Between the Covers: The Question of Albums in the Nineteenth Century, a two-part panel organized by Marilyn Kushner.

Doctoral student Lydia Klein spoke on “Revolutions? Modernism and Postmodernism in Late Socialist Urban Planning in Poland” in the session Beyond ‘Postmodern Urbanism’: Reconsidering the Forms and Politics of Late 20th-Century Urban Design.

The department was also well represented by several alumni.

Katherine Laura Jentleson, High Museum of Art, discussed “Folk Art’s Footprint in the 21st Century Museum” in the session Art + History = Folk Art.




Victoria Young Ji Lee, Duke University, spoke on “Mobility and Connection: Socialist Art and Its Transnational Network in East Asia” in the session Building an Alternative Modernity: Artistic Exchange Between Postwar Socialist Nations.

Camila Maroja, Brown University, discussed “Vontade Construtiva: Latin America’s Sensitive Geometry” in the session New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America.

Alfredo Rivera spoke on “’Within the Revolution, Everything’: Propaganda and Pop Art in Socialist Cuba” in the session Aesthetics and Art Theory in the Socialist Context.

Jasmina Tumbas, University at Buffalo, SUNY, presented “Do Not Look Into Gypsy Eyes: Selma Selman’s Politics of Resistance” in the Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture Emerging Scholars session.