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Graduate Student Profiles
Sinem is a PhD student studying early modern Muslim empires. She is especially interested in art and politics, collecting, and cultural exchange. Currently, she studies gift giving between the Ottomans and
Safavids in the 16th and 17th centuries. Before initially joining the program for an MA in 2004, Sinem completed BA degrees in sociology and history at Koc University, and an MA in history at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Aditi is a doctoral candidate specializing in Islamic art and architecture of the South Asian subcontinent with a general research interest in Sufi shrine architecture and a specific interest in the representations of cities in photography and literature. Her dissertation, which is tentatively titled: “Palimpsests of the Past in the Present: Shapes of Delhi in Visual and Literary Cultures (1947-present)" aims to examine the Indian capital city, Delhi, not simply as a space constructed through built structures but also as an idea constructed through the pervasive repetition of specific visual and textual imagery from twentieth-century popular cultures. She is also minoring in South Asian Literature.
Anna is a second year MA student specializing in Contemporary art and Critical Theory. Her current research interests include the attempts of contemporary artists to address and subvert rape as constructed by legal systems, and additionally the use of 19th century European print imagery as
evidence to support the work of history.
Radha is a doctoral student in Islamic art, focusing specifically on the modern era. She is especially interested in issues concerning the melding of art and technology.
Lauren is a M.A. student and Contemporary Art specialist with a range of interests too broad for her own good. These include feminist art and theory, queer studies, the politics of visibility, performance and alternative media, contemporary criticism, and comics. Recent topics of Lauren's research include the practice of displaying human beings as curiosities and oddities during the modern period, and AIDS and visibility politics in the late 20th century. Before joining the MA program in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, Lauren earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.
Midori is a doctoral student currently working on her dissertation, "Sec's Appeal: The Secretary in American Popular Culture, 1900-64." By examining the material world of office workers, including the full range of images, objects, and environments that they interacted with on a daily basis—rather than focusing on a single type or medium—Midori's work seeks to bring unexpected issues about 20th century women to the surface. Foremost among these are concerns about the identity of the "modern" woman, specifically in regards to work, class and sexuality.
Atreyee is a Ph.D. student specializing in South Asian art. Using the Shilpi Chakra, a Delhi-based artist’s collective, as a lens, her Ph.D. dissertation traces the development of institutions for the production, exhibition, and collection of art works in India as symptomatic of the formation of a postcolonial public sphere. As an extension of her interest in the institutionalization of art in colonial/postcolonial India, she has recently published essays on global art history and the interface between religion and archaeology in India. Atreyee completed her B.A. in Art History from M. S. University, Vadodara before joining the University of Minnesota for a M.A. in 2003.
Melissa Heer is a first year M.A. student focusing on Contemporary Art. She is particularly interested in
using a feminist methodology to look at the work of contemporary American artists and subcultural forms of expression.
Tiffany is a doctoral student whose research interests include contemporary art, art of the United States, feminist theory, and historiography. Her dissertation project "Tracing Genealogies: The Question of Inheritance in Early and Contemporary American Art” critically considers the genealogical metaphors at work in art historical narratives. Other projects include an analysis of monstrosity in the post-war performance of Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka, and an examination of the gendered nineteenth-century pictorial conventions that informed interpretations of inquest photography used during the trial of Lizzie Borden. Her essay "Bodies of Evidence: Inquest Photography in the Trial of Lizzie Borden" can be found in Robert Asher, Lawrence B. Goodheart, Alan Rogers, eds., Murder on Trial: 1620-2002 (New York: SUNY Press, 2005).
Venugopal Maddipati has a B-Arch degree from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. He is now a PhD. candidate at the department of Art History at the University of Minnesota. His dissertation focuses on the impact of Gandhian ideas and ideals in the field of Architecture, primarily in India and South Africa. He is particularly interested in the manner in which localism, or thinking locality emerges in the writings of such diverse authors such as Christian Norberg Shulz, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Laurie Baker and Alberto Perez Gomez. The ideal of low cost architectural construction, especially in the rural housing sector in India, and the manner in which, this ideal intersects with diverse ethical philosophies as they emerge in pre and post independance regional literature is of interest to him. For the Fall and Spring semesters 2006 – 2007, he will be in India on a American Institute of Indian Studies fellowship to conduct his dissertation research. He will be traveling and examining the work being done at Delhi, Wardha, and the various Nirmiti Kendras at Kollam, Trivandrum and Trichur in Kerala and by Ashramites at Yerupedu and Warangal in Andhra.
Ceri is a first-year doctoral student specializing in modern and contemporary art. She earned her MA at Bowling Green State University, where her thesis examined the work of the French performance artist Orlan and its unique interaction with the male gaze of Western art history.
Sugata is a Ph.D. student specializing in South Asian art. His Ph.D.
engages with 19th and 20th-century architecture and the visual culture of
Braj Bhumi, a pilgrimage site in north India, as indicative of a modern
re-configuration of religion and identitities mediated through colonialism,
nationalism, and urbanization. Beyond his interest in modern pilgrimage
sites, Sugata has also published essays on Indian popular print culture,
20th-century advertising, and, most recently, the notion of a “global art history.” In addition to an M.A. in Art History from M. S. University, Vadodara, Sugata holds an M.Phil. from the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
Emily is a first year Masters student focusing on 19th and 20th century art. She is particularly intersted in religious subject matter and representations of Judaism. She received her undergraduate at Boston University and has spent the last few years working in art education in various settings including museums and community centers.
Sarah Sik is a Ph.D. student specializing in 19 th-century art. Her research interests include the turn-of-the-century Minneapolis designer John Scott Bradstreet; the exhibition of a suite of fifty-nine German kunstgewerbe rooms sent to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904; the interchange of artist-potters in France, Japan, and America from 1867 to 1900; the emergence of celebrity culture in fin-de-siècle France; the figure of Pierrot in French art (particularly focused upon the prominence of this figure in the work of the French humorist Adolphe-Léon Willette); the roles of satire, sadism, and sanity in the organization of the Rose + Croix exhibition society, the writings of Max Nordau, and the critical response of George Bernard Shaw; and the French symbolist sculptor François-Rupert Carabin, the subject of her dissertation research.
Susan is a first year PhD student, having earned her MA in Art History at the U of M in 2006. Before beginning her studies in Art History, Susan was a practicing registered nurse specializing in critical care.
Her most recent project examined the complexities of religious conversion of New World peoples, specifically focusing on the parallels and disruptions presented by the literal and figural representation of “incorporation” surrounding the figure of the cannibal. A paper based on this project entitled “Cannibals Among Us: Communion, Incorporation, and New World Conversion in Vasco Fernandes' Adoration of the Magi" will be presented at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Interdisciplinary Conference in February 2007.
Other projects include a broad study of Adoration of the Magi scenes with a concentrated look at the figure of the Madonna in Childbed and considerations of women’s visionary literature; the cross-cultural exchange evidenced by a 12 th c. retable from Stavelot depicting the Pentecost; and an extended examination of the life and works of the 1930s ex libris artist, Kazuo Nakata, centered on four of his handmade presentation books.
Erica is a Ph.D. student specializing in 19th and early 20th century art. She received her M.A. from New York University where her thesis involved an examination of the idea of the muse as a label for the artists Dora Maar and Gabriele Munter. Her research interests include women artists, criticisms of their works, representations of women in art, connections between literature and the visual arts, Scandinavian art at the end of the 19th century, and art theory.
Laura is a first year Masters student focusing on Contemporary Art. She is particularly interested in the ways in which contemporary art intervenes with contemporary culture, particularly French contemporary society. She received her undergraduate degree from Macalester college with a major in International Studies and French. She is also soon to complete her Masters in Art Administration from Saint Mary’s University for which she has worked in a variety of different administrative positions in several art organizations, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts here in the Twin Cities.
Paul is a doctoral candidate studying contemporary art and critical theory.
During the 2006-2007 school year, he will be doing dissertation research as
an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Helsinki.
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