Jennifer Marshall

Assistant Professor

Office: 358 Heller Hall

Office Hours - Fall 2009

Thurs: 3:00 - 5:00

Phone: (612) 625-7120
Fax: (612) 626-8679

Jennifer Marshall (Ph.D., UCLA, 2005) specializes in the art and visual/material culture of the United States (colonial period to post-WWII). In her classes, Professor Marshall uses images as a fresh way to understand America’s complex cultural history. Special course topics include: American modernism, American photography, African-American art history, and museum studies.

Professor Marshall’s research focuses on issues of materiality and modernity in early twentieth-century American art and aesthetics. In her current book project, “Machine Art, 1934: The Stuff of American Modernism,” she offers a critical history of the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark Machine Art show. An exhibit of airplane propellers, ball bearings, pots, pans, and Petri dishes, Machine Art offered Depression-era Americans a concrete way of coming to terms with modern abstract value.

Professor Marshall’s recent publications include, “Toward Phenomenology: A Material Culture Studies Approach to Landscape Theory” (Landscape Theory, eds. James Elkins and Rachel Ziady DeLue, Routledge, 2007), “Clean Cuts: Procter & Gamble’s Depression-Era Soap-Carving Contests” (Winterthur Portfolio, Spring 2008), “In Form We Trust: Neoplatonism: the Gold Standard, and the Museum of Modern Art’s Machine Art Show” (Art Bulletin, December 2008).

Prior to her appointment in the Art History Department at the University of Minnesota, Professor Marshall served as Acting Assistant Professor of American Art History at Stanford University (2006-08), and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2005-06).

Site last modified on September 3, 2009

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