Here are some of our recent art history graduates, from the Class of 2000 to the present day.
- Looking for earlier classes? Go to this page.
- Recent studio art and graphic design graduates? Go here.
- Recent art history theses are here.
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2023
Riley Balzer (MA 2023, art history) presented her research at the international Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies at Harvard University in 2023: “Deconstructing Nazi Visual Politics, Symbolic Representations of Power, and The Savior Complex: Notre-Dame de Paris from 1940–1944.” She developed the paper in Dr. Jennifer M. Feltman‘s seminar, Notre Dame Through Time (Special Topics, ARH 560). In 2022, Balzer presented “Connoisseurs vs. Forgers: A Conversation on the Intersections of Art Forgery, Patronage, and Methodology,” SECAC in Baltimore. She received a BA in art history with a minor in French and Francophone studies from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2017. She worked as a curatorial intern at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture and has also served as an intern at the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville.
Amelia Beacham (BA 2023, art history, minor in Latin), from Birmingham, Alabama, was the department’s choice for 2023 Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Art History. Amelia holds a 4.0 GPA, has never made below an A, and is completing her BA degree in three years. The art history faculty praised Amelia’s commitment to art historical study, research and critical thought. “She excels in all aspects of art history, thinking broadly and deeply and always making interesting connections,” Associate Professor Dr. Rachel Stephens said. “In addition to her thoughtful participation in classes, Amelia is a warm and kind presence around our department. Her generous nature extends to helping classmates with projects, even as she unassumingly excels at her own work.”
Olivia Sims Paterson (MA 2023, art history) teaches art history at UA as a part-time instructor. She earned her MA in the track 2 program focusing on 19th-century European art, specifically female art circles in England. Sims also earned a certificate in museum studies. While a student, Sims held an assistantship and worked as a student assistant at the Paul R. Jones Museum, a research assistant for the digital art history database Global Makers, and an archival research project member of AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, & Exhibitions). She presented her research at SECAC in 2022 and in 2020, as well as the UA/UAB 27th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History. In 2022-23, Sims served as president of the UA Society of Art History Students, also known as “The Guild.” At UA she was awarded a Graduate Council Fellowship and the Joseph S. and Carolyn Bolt Endowed Scholarship in Art History. Sims also holds a BA summa cum laude in studio art and a minor in art history from Jacksonville State University.
Michele J. Taylor (MA 2023, art history) earned her MA in the track 2 program, and certificates in museum studies and book arts. Taylor received a BA in English from UA in 2020. She played mellophone in the Million Dollar Band from 2016-2020, and French horn (first chair) in the UA Symphonic Band from 2016-2018.
Julie Weber (MA 2023, art history; BFA 2012, studio art) was the department’s choice for 2023 Outstanding Graduate Student in Art History. Weber held an assistantship and her research focused on modern and contemporary art history with a focus on twentieth-century Latin American art. She was awarded the competitive Havner Curatorial Internship at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and she currently serves as the Goodrich Fellow at the Birmingham Museum of Art. At the 2022 27th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, Weber’s paper presentation, “The Life and Art of Archibald Motley, Jr.: Before and After Paris,” won third place in the Best Paper Awards. She received a BFA in studio art with a concentration in photography in 2012 from UA, graduating magna cum laude. Dr. Rachel Stephens said, “Julie has pursued her MA degree with professionalism, commitment, and passion. Not only is she working at the highest level, but she is steady, reliable and a wonderful colleague in the department.”
2022
Sophia Ancira (BA 2022, art history, BS 2022, marketing) is enrolled in Georgetown University’s graduate program in art and museum studies. From January through May 2023, Ancira held an internship at the Kreeger Museum, a modern and contemporary non-profit art collection in Washington, D.C., and in May and June, she held a marketing internship with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Ancira was awarded 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Art History by her professors in the department.
Olivia Bennes (BA 2022, art history) is an MA candidate in art history at the University of Georgia studying Slavic art and architecture from the Medieval period. Bennes recently held an internship at the National Czech and Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Katherine Crowe (BA 2022, double major in political science and art history) is enrolled in UA School of Law. Crow served as a judicial intern to Judge L. Scott Coogler in the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama and worked as a summer associate at the law firm Carr Allison in Birmingham, which specializes in representing business and the insurance industry.
Olivia Janson (BA 2022, art history, minors in Italian and Medieval and Early Modern European Studies [MEMES]) is in the master’s program in art history with an assistantship at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Her research is at the intersection of women and religion during the late Medieval and Early Modern period in Italy.
Ashleigh McCool Junkin (MA 2022, art history) teaches art history at UA. She worked at the Warner Transportation Museum during the summer of 2022. Her areas of concentration were 19th- and 20th-century American photography. Junkin received the BA from UA in 2021 where she majored in art history and minored in the Blount Scholars Program. She presented her research paper, “Picturing Oppression: Spectacle and the African American Body in Turn of the Century Medical Photography,” at the 2021 SECAC conference in Lexington, Kentucky, in the session, Dark Amusements: Turn-of-the-Century American Spectacles and Race.
Rebecca Lowery (MA 2022, art history, Accelerated Master’s Program [AMP]; BA 2021, art history) is in the PhD program in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Lowery presented her research at the international Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies at Harvard University in March 2023. Titled “The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man at the Church of Saint Pierre: Economic Morality in the Middle Ages,” she originally developed the paper in Dr. Jennifer M. Feltman’s seminar, Medieval Sculpture. Her MA thesis, titled “A Statement of Self as Court Artist, Artemisia Gentileschi’s La Pittura,” engaged with questions of self-portraiture and the gift economy at court. “At Pitt,” Lowery said, “I hope to continue research related to court patronage and self-portraiture as it relates to women and gender with the intention of understanding how works of art functioned in the culture in which they were made.”
Lizzie Orlofsky (MA 2022, art history) serves as the digital history curator for the Alabama Department of Archives & History in Montgomery, the nation’s oldest publicly funded archives. At UA Orlofsky was named Outstanding Graduate Student in Art History in 2022, the department’s highest honor. She focused her research in contemporary and modern art history and held a graduate teaching assistantship. Her master’s thesis is titled, “Measured on a Sunbeam: Body, Gender, and Performance in Zelda Fitzgerald’s Figural Artworks,” in which she reveals Fitzgerald’s intimate interactions with visual production as well as the autobiographical and performative functions of her artistry. She has presented her research in international, national and regional conferences including the virtual Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Festival hosted by the University of Kent in Canterbury, England; and the Southeastern Renaissance Conference (SRC) at Duke University. She has been the administrator for Souls Grown Deep Digital Humanities Project and a contributor for Global Makers Digital Humanities Project. Orlofsky graduated summa cum laude from Troy University with a BS in studio art and a minor in cultural studies. Before coming to UA, she served as a curatorial intern at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts where she helped curate the exhibition Zelda (canceled due to Covid-19). She was a recipient of The University of Alabama Graduate Council Fellowship in 2020-2021 and her paper won second place in the Harrison Award for Excellence in Research for her presentation at the UA-UAB 26th Annual Graduate Student Symposium.
2021
Nadia DelMedico (MA 2021, art history; BA 2019, art history, minor, Italian) is enrolled in the doctoral program in art history at the University of Minnesota. The program is fully funded for all graduate students and DelMedico was also awarded a College of Liberal Arts Graduate Fellowship for her first year. In addition, DelMedico teaches survey of art history online for UA. She was selected the department’s 2021 Outstanding Graduate Student in Art History. Her master’s thesis, titled, “Prejudice and Privilege: Artistic Interaction between Free People of Color and Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans,” discusses the creative relationships between Italian immigrants and free artists of color in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New Orleans. Her recent research presentations include “Eras of Iconography in Manuel Hughes’ ‘Arkansas Memories’ Series,” at SECAC 2020; and “Finding Religion in Genre: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Moroccan Scene,” at the 26th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, for which she won first prize in the Harrison Awards for Excellence in Research in 2021. As an undergraduate (BA 2019, art history), DelMedico received the Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award as the result of her work, mentored by Dr. Rachel Stephens, on the history of slavery on the UA campus. She also jointly presented research with Dr. Stephens at the symposium, “Universities, Slavery, Public Memory, and the Built Landscape,” sponsored by the University of Virginia and the Slave Dwelling Project. Read more about DelMedico’s research here.
Lydia McCollum received the MA and the BA in art history in 2021 as part of the Accelerated Master’s Program (AMP) and was a graduate teaching assistant. Her minor in the BA program was in Medieval and Early Modern European Studies (MEMES). McCollum currently works as a visitor services guide at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Emily Morgan (BA 2021, double major in art history and English with a minor in French) was accepted to MA programs in art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at The University of Alabama with a Graduate Council Capstone Fellowship. She will attend the University of Illinois in the fall. Morgan was selected the department’s 2021 Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Art History. She was on the Dean’s List from 2017 to the present with a 4.0 GPA in her major and a 4.0 GPA overall. Morgan’s research paper, “Those Who Challenge the Southern Belle: The Hidden Face of Alabama Sex work,” was accepted for presentation in the highly competitive Hunter Museum of American Art’s 2020 American Art Symposium and was published in the Blount Literary Undergraduate Journal. Her research project, “Dismantling the Bible Belt: Religious Diversity of the American South,” won first place in the National Society of Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) – Alabama Division and represented UA in the national NSCDA competition. She has held two internships at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and one each at the Warner Foundation and the Kentuck Art Center. Morgan served as senior editor of Her Campus online magazine, president and vice-president of the General Art Club.
Anna Wallace Pitts (BA 2021, summa cum laude, double major: art history and studio art; minor: Blount Scholars Program) will attend Trinity College Dublin to pursue a Master of Philosophy in art history this fall. The program focuses on the history of Irish art and architecture, Pitts said, “which dovetails perfectly with my research interests of public art and memory, post-colonial theory, and geopolitics surrounding Irish Art. Trinity has always been a dream of mine so I’m very happy to take this next step.” Pitts also thanked all her professors at the University of Alabama “who guided me along the way, especially Dr. Lucy Curzon and Dr. Tanja Jones. Sláinte!”
Meghan Ruyle (MA 2021, art history), in the Track 2 art history program and the museum studies certificate program, has been accepted to the PhD program in museum education and visitor-centered curation at Florida State University. Ruyle’s concentration was in modern and contemporary art, especially in contemporary women artists and gender studies. She recently won an honorable mention in the Harrison Award for Excellence in Research for her presentation at the UA-UAB 26th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History.
Olivia Turner (MA 2021, art history, Early Modern/Spanish Baroque; BA 2019, art history and Spanish with a minor in English lit.) has accepted a full-time position as a curatorial assistant with the Meadows Museum in Dallas, Texas. While a graduate student she worked as a gallery assistant in the Paul R. Jones Museum and The University of Alabama Gallery and also served as a facilitating instructor for Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority’s (PARA) Active Classroom, which supplements the regular school day for children in grades K-8 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020
Faith Barringer (MA 2020, art history; BA, 2018, studio art and art history) is enrolled in the doctoral program in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida. She presented “Creating a Female History Painter: The Reception Pieces of Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun” at SECAC in December 2020. Her thesis research at UA focused on three eighteenth-century women artists and was titled “Creating a Female History Painter: Vigée-LeBrun, Labille-Guiard, Mongez, and the French Academy.” In 2019 Barringer was awarded the S. Eric Molin Prize for the best presentation by a graduate student at the annual meeting of the East Central American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (EC/ASECS) in Gettysburg. She was selected the department’s 2020 Outstanding Graduate Student in Art History.
Kathryn Bornhoft (MA 2020, art history, MUSM; BFA 2016, studio art) in the Track 2 art history program and the museum studies certificate program, presented her MA capstone project titled “Matters of Representation,” via Zoom, which detailed her research on issues of voice and representation in the way museums have historically represented Native American culture and art. Bornhoft wrote, “Often relegated to oddity or obscurity, Native Americans have to fight to be seen as they are: a living, vibrant and diverse community.” She added that museums are vital in providing a path to that more realistic view. “As both centers of learning and trusted social institutions, museums must address past wrongdoings and provide an environment in which underrepresented communities can have authority and agency.” She also completed a museum internship at Moundville Archaeological Park.
Noah Dasinger (BA 2020, art history) won an honorable mention in the Harrison Award for Research for his paper, “Epigraphic Disparities in the Tomb of Leonardo Bruni: Understanding Tradition and its Relation to the Tomb’s Iconography and Choice of Lettering Style,” presented at the 26th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History at The University of Alabama. Dasinger is currently a graduate student in art history at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. His research interests include Italian Renaissance art, specifically Latin epigraphy.
Anna Ingram (BA 2020, art history) is enrolled in Parsons School of Design’s MA in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies. Read about her senior year during the COVID-19 pandemic and how she sorted out her next steps.
Meghan Johnson (MA 2020, art history, MUSM; BA 2018, studio art), in the Track 2 art history program and the museum studies certificate program, completed a virtual internship at the Gorgas House, part of The University of Alabama Museums in 2020. Her MA capstone project was titled “Curating the Current: Museums and Adapting to Covid-19.”
Shannon Walsh (MA 2020, art history, MUSM), in the Track 2 art history program and the museum studies certificate program, completed a virtual internship at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in 2020. Walsh presented “The War Spirit at Home: Lilly Martin Spencer’s Civil War,” at SECAC 2020. Her MA capstone project was titled, “Breaking Down the Barriers: Encouraging Accessibility in Museums Through the Use of Social Media and Online Content.” Originally from Lebanon, Ohio, Walsh earned a BA from UA, double majoring in history and studio art with a minor in art history.
2018
Megan Goldman (BFA 2018, concentration: painting; minor, art history) interned with curator Mardee Goff at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, summer 2017.
Sommer Hallquist (BA 2018, art history and anthropology, minor in French) received the MA in art and architecture from Cambridge University (UK) and has been accepted to the PhD program at Cambridge in the history of art for the fall of 2020. As an undergraduate, she was awarded one of eight highly competitive summer internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters Museum in New York.
Hailee Singleton (BA 2018, double major in history and art history) has been accepted to the master’s program in collections management and curating practices at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for fall 2021.
Rebecca Teague (MA 2018, art history) is enrolled in the master of library and information studies program at UA and is a project assistant for the on-line digital project Global Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts in 2020-2022, a collaborative project between UA’s art historians, the Alabama Digital Humanities Center, and the department of computer science funded by a Kress Foundation Digital Art History Grant.
2017
Sara Bernard (MA 2017, art history; BA 2013, double major in foreign languages and literature (classical civilization) and art history, with a minor in English) is a cataloging associate at the Livingston Parish Library in Livingston, Louisiana. Bernard received her MLIS from LSU in 2023 with an emphasis in cultural heritage resource management.
Kelby Cox (MA 2017, art history; BA art history and BA studio art, 2015) is the lead museum specialist of the medium artifact team on the Garber Move Project for the Collections Processing Unit at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., as of February 2022. Cox previously worked as a museum technician at NASM, and a collections assistant at the Cook Museum of Natural Science in Decatur, Ala. She also taught art history as an adjunct instructor at John C. Calhoun State Community College in Decatur, Alabama. In 2017, she presented her thesis research, “Stitching Agency: Enslaved African American Quiltmaking and the Prejudicial South,” at the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History. She also presented papers at the Nineteenth Century Studies conference in Charleston, SC, and the Southern Studies conference at Auburn University at Montgomery, Ala., with travel funding from The University of Alabama’s Graduate School. During her undergraduate years, Cox was awarded an internship at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. She earned her undergraduate degree from The University of Alabama in three years with a double major in art history and studio art and a minor in Italian.
Lauren Eich (MA 2017, art history) is a senior adult education art instructor in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Grace Fitts (BA 2017, art history) is a project manager at Freeman’s Auction House in Philadelphia, the oldest auction house in America (founded 1805). Fitts was an intern at Freeman’s during her senior year at UA.
John Paul Foley (BA 2017, art history) was awarded a summer internship at the White House Historical Association for the summer of 2017.
Emilee Barrow Hendrickson (MA 2017, art history; BFA 2013, painting, printmaking) is a docent assistant at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Taylor Murray (BA 2017, art history) works as a fulfillment coordinator at the PETA Foundation where he has worked since 2018. Murray still manages the popular art history social media site arthistoryfeed that he founded on Instagram (here’s his story). Murray worked as an intern at The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia for the summer of 2017.
Allison Springer (MA 2017, art history) is currently a PhD student in art history at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her master’s thesis was titled “Mixed-Race Fantasies: Abolitionist Propaganda as Spectacles of Race in the Nineteenth Century.” Read more about Allison Springer here.
2016
Erin Hein (BA 2016, art history; BS, chemistry) is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland. During the summer of 2017, she interned in the European art curatorial department at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Hein presented her research, “Uncovering Roman Activity at the Aquae Apollinares through The Vicarello Goblet” at the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History at UA, March 2017, where she won the Harrison Award for Excellence in Research – Graduate Paper Presentation. Hein was awarded a highly competitive, six-week art conservation internship at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in the summer of 2015. For more on Hein’s experiences, click here to read The Loupe article.
Peyton C. Lambert (BA 2016, art history, minor in anthropology and general business) is a fine arts cataloguer at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas. She received the master of arts in art history in 2017 from the University of St Andrews and the master of fine and decorative art and design from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in 2018. Lambert has also studied at the École du Louvre, Paris.
Micah-Shea McKibben (MA 2016, art history) is a part-time instructor in art history for The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History. McKibben’s master’s thesis was titled “Moving Beyond Beauty: Uncovering Sandro Botticelli’s Isis,” under the direction of Dr. Tanja Jones. As a graduate student, she specialized in Early Modern art history. She presented her research on Botticelli’s “Isis” at the South Central Renaissance Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, a regional conference of graduate students and professionals in Renaissance Studies. McKibben said, “One of my best memories was getting to go to London, England, to see the Sandro Botticelli painting I wrote my master’s thesis on.” McKibben graduated cum laude from the University of South Alabama’s Honors Program in 2012 with a BA in art history and a minor in history.
Sara Taricco (BA 2016, art history) was accepted to graduate programs in museum and preservation studies at: Florida State, Clemson, Tulane, and the University of Denver.
2015
Caitlin Huber (MA 2015, art history) wrote a thesis titled “The Battle House: Greek Revival, Religion, Race Relations, and Slavery Justifications,” under the direction of Dr. Rachel Stephens. Huber is currently pursuing a PhD in art history from Rice University.
Kelly Konrad (BA 2015, art history) is currently enrolled in the MA program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies at the Parsons School of Design in Paris. Konrad was accepted there as a Dean’s Merit Scholar.
Carrie Chism Lien (MA 2015, art history) is a part-time instructor (online) in art history at Shelton State Community College and the University of West Florida. Lien’s thesis was titled “Recalling the Council of Ferrara and Florence: Two Fifteenth-Century Florentine uomini famosi Cycles,” under the direction of Dr. Tanja Jones.
Sara Morris (MA, 2015, art history) works as a management support assistant for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
2014
Michelle Deane Peterson (BA 2014, double major in art history and studio art [focus on photography]) teaches art in the Hancock County Schools in Kiln, Mississippi. She has also served as outreach coordinator for Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi, Miss.
Justin Greenlee (MA 2014, art history) is a PhD in student in Art and Architectural History at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville Va. His master’s thesis was titled “Quod Vocatur Paradiso: The Pigna and the Atrium at Old St. Peter’s,” under the direction of Dr. Tanja Jones.
Emily Brown Kelley (MA 2014, art history) teaches art history as an adjunct instructor at The University of Alabama and at Samford University. Her master’s thesis was titled “A Papal Hall of State: Ceremony and Function in the Borgia Apartment,” under the direction of Dr. Tanja Jones.
Rachel Robbins (MA 2014, art history) has taught art history as an adjunct instructor for The University of Alabama. Her master’s thesis was titled “Politics and Provenance: Five Hundred Years of Images of the Grande Chasse of the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris,” under the direction of Dr. Tanja Jones.
Kaitlyn Sarao (BA 2014, art history) went on to earn a BS in apparel design and textiles at UA in 2020. She is a freelance fashion designer and sells her own line of designs through her online shop Plastique.
Rachael Sherrer (BA 2014, art history with a minor in French and chemistry) is on the faculty of the department of urology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Sherrer earned her MD in urology at UAB School of Medicine in 2019.
Zoe Elizabeth Stamatelos (BA 2014, chemistry and art history) recently passed the New York bar exam. Stamatelos works as a law clerk in Chicago specializing in intellectual property law, legal case management, legal writing and research, and cross-cultural lawyering. She earned her JD from American University.
Casey Stephenson Waites (BA 2014, art history and English) teaches literature at Jefferson County International Baccalaureate High School in Birmingham, Alabama. She also earned an MA in literature from UA in 2017.
2013
Sharmaria Borden (BA, art history and studio art [focus in digital media], minor in entrepreneurship) serves as a user experience designer at Randall-Reilly Information Technology in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Gina Cashia (BA 2013, art history) was promoted to vice president of operations at Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries in New York, N.Y., in October of 2020.
Mary K. Dyer (MA, art history, 2013) teaches art history at Chattanooga State Community College. Previously, Dyer taught online art history courses for The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History for nine years. Her thesis was titled, “Images for the Bride: the Chastelaine de Vergi Fresco Cycle in the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence.”
Aaron Sanders Head (BA, art history, 2013) has a studio on Main Street in Greensboro, Alabama, where he exhibits, conducts workshops and sells his own hand-dyed, -embroidered and -quilted textile art. In March 2021, he hosted printmaking student Sarah Dittmann’s MFA exhibition.
Ashley D. Millwood (MA, art history, 2013) is a Marketing Associate for Keystone Property Group in Philadelphia.
Frances Nichols (MA, art history, 2013) is an art consultant for Gallery 1930 in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
2012
Maggie Coats (BA 2012, art history) is a JD candidate at Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado.
2009
Rebecca Godfrey (BA 2009, art history) won a cash award for her work, Fully Aware I, in the 2019 West Alabama Juried Show. Godfrey is a self-taught abstract artist working primarily with acrylic and watercolor. Before painting, she worked as a freelance graphic designer for fifteen years. Since 2016, she has also taught art classes at American Christian Academy in Tuscaloosa and a weekly small group for adults at her church, which now has a waiting list. “I was struck by how many adults wanted an opportunity to express themselves creatively, but felt scared and unqualified,” Godfrey wrote. “After that semester, I knew part of my personal mission is to help people realize they are creative…It’s so important to me that people know art is for everyone, that you were born to create, and the world desperately needs your unique creative expression.” Her art website is here.
Laura Landegger, who was enrolled as an art history graduate student from 2005 to 2009, received her MA in art history from SUNY-Purchase in 2022. She said that her thesis was titled “Social Stories as Accessibility Resources for Visitors with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities. Landegger also holds a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Paris-Nanterre (1994) and a Master’s in Library Sciences from INTD-CNAM (Institut National des Sciences et Techniques de la Documentation) in Paris (1996).
2008
Viola Moten Ratcliffe (BA 2008, art history) has been named the 2022 interim director for Bib & Tucker Sew-Op in Avondale, in east Birmingham, a nonprofit organization that teaches skills and provides economic opportunity for participants. She previously served as shop manager and program manager. Ratcliffe actively promoted the non-profit’s programs such as Quilting Activity Resource Kit (QUARK), which teaches fundamentals of quilting while slipping in mathematic concepts. For two years, Ratcliffe also served as curator specialist for the Troy University Rosa Parks Museum, where she did everything from coordinating museum installation, liaising between artists and the museum, and implementing marketing, publicity strategies and public outreach programs. Previously she worked at Bowling Green State University, where she was graduate coordinator for their art history docent program, chief coordinator of a visiting artists program and collections registrar for the Park West Gallery’s Collection of Fine Art. She has also served as an intern at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s education department. Most recently, Ratcliffe started her own business, The Lovely Home Party, which specializes in handmade home and party decor.
2007
Rachel Dobson (MA 2007, art history) has served as slide curator, then visual resources curator and communications specialist for the UA Department of Art and Art History since 2001. She loves to hear from our art and art history alumni. She writes stories about art and art history alumni for the department’s monthly newsletter and the Loupe, writes the weekly West Alabama Art Roundup, and manages this website. Contact her with your alumni news or story ideas. In graduate school, her area of focus was Medieval iconography in illuminated prayerbooks, and Dr. Mindy Nancarrow was her thesis advisor (“Image in Context: A Prayer to the Good Angel with an Annunciation in a Fifteenth-century Book of Hours“). Dobson also earned the MLIS in the UA School of Library and Information Studies. She has published scholarly and popular articles about her nineteenth-century ancestors including Pentecostal organizers, slaveholders, and journalists in Alabama and Georgia.
Corey Dzenko (MA 2007, art history) is co-editor, with Theresa Avila, of Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture: Making and Being Made, published by Routledge (2018). She received the PhD from the University of New Mexico and has been a Visiting Fellow in the University of Nottingham’s (UK) Department of Art History. Dzenko is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
Matthew Harper (BA 2007, German and art history, Phi Beta Kappa) is the owner of Kona Frame Shop in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, specializing in conservation and archival framing.
2006
Megan Koza Mitchell (MA 2006, art history; BFA 1998) started a new position as Director Of Development at Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans in April 2022. She served as development director for the New Orleans Film Society from 2020 to 2022.
2002
Dr. Jennifer M. Feltman (BS 2002, interior design; minor art history) is an associate professor of medieval art in the department of art and art history at The University of Alabama where she has taught since 2016. Feltman’s research is supported by the NEH, the FACE Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Kress Foundation, the Medieval Academy of America, the International Center for Medieval Art, and the Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Technology, Science, and Art (AVISTA). She was awarded a 2020-21 Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Seed Grant to partner with teachers and digital media experts to build a virtual reality experience of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at Reims in France and incorporate it into seventh- and eighth-grade media arts classes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. with distinction in the history and criticism of art from Florida State University and the B.S., summa cum laude, from The University of Alabama. Read more about her research here.
2000
Dr. Laura Lake Smith (BA 2000, art history) is visiting lecturer in modern and contemporary art at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Her current research focuses on the American artist Richard Tuttle. Her other research interests include twentieth-century abstraction, time-based media, and the intersection of contemporary art and philosophy. Before coming to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Smith taught at University of Georgia, Emory University, Coastal Carolina University, Belmont University, and Lipscomb University and worked at Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee. She received the PhD from the University of Georgia and the MA from Vanderbilt University.
Michelle Moseley (MA 2000, BA 1997, art history) is associate professor and chair of art history in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and co-director of the MA in Material Culture and Public Humanities in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 2007. Dr, Moseley received her PhD with honors from the University of Kansas in 2008 in the area of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting and prints. Her publications investigate issues of class, gender, and economy in informal baroque and Renaissance portraiture, as well as the overlooked role of early modern women in collecting luxury objects. Others include Rembrandt’s etchings and early modern prints as a mechanism for the distribution of new pictorial genres in Europe. Current research projects focus on female collectors in the early modern Netherlands, representations of labor and identity in Dutch portraiture, and the material culture of early modern prints. In 2014, Moseley was the first recipient of SECAC’s William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art for her proposal “Women and Wildness in Early Modern Northern European Visual Culture: Picturing the ‘Wild Woman’ c. 1300-1650.”
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