Director, Museum and Curatorial Studies
Museum studies; performance studies; art criticism and theory; semiotics; poststructuralism; critical theory; gender, sexuality, and feminist thought; postcolonial theory; critical race theory; freaks; hybridity; narrative and the text; tropology; experimental ethnography; political experimentation with form.
Degrees:
M.A., History of Consciousness, UCSC (2008)
M.A., Performance Studies, NYU (2004)
B.A., Women's Studies and English Literature, UM (2003)
Publications:
"Objects of Dis/order: Articulating Curiosities and Engaging People at the Freakatorium" in Defining Memory edited by Amy Levin (2007) ISBN 0759110506
Forthcoming Publications:
"On Making Art/ifacts: They Called Me Mayer July in the Museum," part of a 2009 collection of articles on the exhibition They Called Me Mayer July, by artist Mayer Kirshenblatt, on the ethics of displaying Polish Jews in museums despite a scarcity of "authentic" objects. Edited by Catherine Soussloff.
"Art/artifact: Fragments and Frames." This essay discusses the roles of curators and curatorial methods in determining how objects are interpreted as art objects or cultural artifacts. In the Visual Studies Reader, edited by James Elkins. Routledge Press, 2011.
Catalogue Entries and Minor Publications:
Review of the book, The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity by Dennis Kennedy (Cambridge University Press, 2009). For The Southwest Journal of Cultures (September, 2009)
"Anthropology and War: An Ongoing Debate." Review of critical debates on the military's relationship to the discipline of anthropology. Featured Item in Anthropology News Vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 26 (February 2009)
"Groteskes," program essay for the 2008 exhibition at Hamilton Artists, Inc. (Ontario, Canada) ISBN 1-894861-34-5
"Revolutionary Perversions" Catalogue essay on Chilean-American performance artist Coco Rico's exploitation of the male gaze to promote radical social change. Artist's catalogue. (New York, 2008).
Articles in Progress:
"Intervention/Resurrection: Approaches to Curating Chilean Performance Art" (co-authored with Lissette Olivares)
"Celebrity Skeletons, Ape-Humans In-Situ, and People on Display in U.S. Human Evolution Exhibitions"
"Approaching the Visitorly Museum: a Toolkit for Analyzing Contemporary Display"
"The Cultural Logic of the 'New' Museum"
"Inter/sections & Recent Approaches to Displaying 'World Arts'"
"Re/collection & Display: U.S. Performance Art & Museums since the 1960's"
"Mourning the Museum: Hannah Wilke & Transforming the Exhibition Space"
Forthcoming Book Projects:
Between Objects and People: Figures and Performances of the Visitorly Museum
A critical look at display semiotics, with a particular attention to tropology and performativity in contemporary spaces.
Performance Art and the Dead Circus
Examines the contested histories between Western collection and display practices, and various dis/engagements with performance art, since the museum freak shows of the 19th century
The Task of the Curator: Essays on Translation, Intervention and Innovation in Museums
A collection of previously published essays ("Objects of Dis/order," "On Making Art/ifacts," "Intervention/Resurrection," and others) as well as new texts that explore critical curatorial practice.
Field Trip to San Francisco
Touring Porter College
Class Exhibition
Select Courses:
"HISC 292: The Task of the Curator"
PDF (Syllabus) | Course Website
Graduate seminar and practicum on various modes of curating art and artifacts, with workshops to prepare students for presenting at an academic conference.
"HAVC 190Z: Women Artists, Self-Representations"
PDF (syllabus) | Course Website
Senior seminar that explores how women intervene in the art world and women's movements by representing themselves and their own work
"Artists Critique Museums." Senior seminar on artist interpretations of museums and institutional critiques since the 16th century, with an emphasis on contemporary art practice
"Museums: Past, Present." Survey of collection and display practices since the 16th century
"Freak Shows: Looking at Differences Differently." Alternative approaches to the histories of how race, gender and dis/ability are visualizeed and performed, since colonization
"Museums of Los Angeles: an Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research." Introduces students to interdisciplinary study, engaging scholarship from art history, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, performance studies, and more, in relation to local sites that students students can visit
"Disciplining Objects: Art and Anthropology." Histories of disciplinary practices in museums, since the 19th century
"Museum Anthropology." Graduate seminar, on the histories of ethnographic exhibitions and doing fieldwork in museum spaces
"HAVC 100A: Methods in the History of Art and Visual Culture" TA for Catherine Soussloff, Winter 2006. I have revised this syllabus to teach a similar course as the primary instructor
"WS100: Introduction to Women's Studies," I taught this course in spring 2003 at the University of Michigan
"Semiotics"
"Feminism and Visual Culture"
"Poststructuralism: Roland Barthes""
"Poststructuralism: Michel Foucault"
"Introduction to Tourist Studies"
"Introduction to Performance Studies"
"Introduction to Cultural Studies"
"Contemporary Art"