Jane Blocker

Associate Professor

Director of Graduate Studies

Office: 405 Heller Hall

Office Hours - Fall 2008

Mon, Tues: 11:00-12:00
and by appointment

Phone: (612) 625-1549
Fax: (612) 626-8679

E-mail: block023@umn.edu

Dr. Jane Blocker is a specialist in contemporary art and critical theory. She offers courses such as Art Since 1945, Contemporary Art, Alternative Media: Video, Performance, and Digital Art, as well as courses on gender and sexuality, and 20th century theory and criticism.

Her research has focused primarily on performance art as it developed concurrently with postmodern, feminist, and constructionist theories. Her first book, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile (Duke University Press, 1999), considers the artist's work in relation to the performative production of identity. What the Body Cost: Desire, History, and Performance. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), her second book, critically examines the historiography of mid-twentieth century performance. Her current book, called Seeing Witness: Essays on Contemporary Art and Testimony, examines the witness as a privileged subject position by analyzing installations, performances, photographs, and films by such artists as Alfredo Jaar, James Luna, Eduardo Kac, Christine Borland, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Ann Hamilton.

In addition, she has published the following essays: "This Being You Must Create: Transgenic Art and Seeing the Invisible," Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 192-209; "A Cemetery of Images: Meditations on the Burial of Photographs," Visual Resources XX, no. 2 (May 2004) ; "Binding to Another s Wound: Of Weddings and Witness," in After Criticism: New Responses to Contemporary Art, edited by Gavin Butt. (London: Blackwell, 2005); "Failures of Self-Seeing: James Luna Remembers Dino," Performing Arts Journal XXIII, #1 (January 2001):18-32; "The Art of Renters," in From Your House to Our House, exhibition catalogue (Atlanta: Nexus Contemporary Art Center, 1999); "Woman-House: Architecture, Gender and Hybridity in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?," in Camera Obscura 39 (November 1998):126-150; "Ana Mendieta and the Politics of the Venus Negra," in Farquhar, et al, eds. (Un)fixing Representation, special issue of Cultural Studies 12, #1 (January 1998):31-50; "The Bed Took Up Most of the Room," in Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The End(s) of Performance (New York: N.Y.U. Press, 1997); and Nancy Spero/Leon Golub: Contemporaries, exhibition catalogue (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, 1997).

Site last modified on August 28, 2008

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