Twentieth Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History
Friday, March 6, The University of Alabama
Sessions 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., Ferguson Student Center, Anderson Society Room 313
Keynote Lecture 3:30 p.m., Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library 205
The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History is pleased to announce its Twentieth Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History on March 6, 2015. The symposium will feature seven graduate student speakers from the Joint Program for the M.A. in Art History of UA and UAB and from around the region. They will present their research in the Anderson Society Room of the Ferguson Center from 9-3 (see schedule below).
In conjunction with the symposium, the Department has invited keynote speaker Barbara Mooney, associate professor of American art and architecture at the University of Iowa and a leading scholar in race and architecture, as well as a distinguished teacher. Dr. Mooney will present “From Jumping Jack to Jump Jim Crow: The Origins of a Pernicious Southern Stereotype?” on the origins and evolution of racist imagery at 3:30 in Gorgas Library 205 with a reception following. Mooney is the author of Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the Native Elite (University of Virginia Press, 2008). The public is invited to attend the sessions and the keynote lecture.
The 2015 symposium is generously supported by the UA Department of Art and Art History, the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, the Department of American Studies and Harrison Galleries, Tuscaloosa.
Barbara Mooney’s keynote lecture has received funding from the Summersell Center for the Study of the South, Associate Dean Roger Sidje and the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama.
The Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, sponsored and shared by the departments of art and art history at The University of Alabama and The University of Alabama at Birmingham, alternates campuses each year. The symposium was begun in 1995 by faculty on both campuses to bring their students together to hear and be heard by eminent scholars working in the field of art history. Renowned scholars such as Paul Barolsky in the field of Italian Renaissance art, Allison Kettering in the field of Dutch Baroque art, and young, up-and-coming scholars like Michael Yonan, Krista Thompson, and Graham Boettcher, the William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, have been keynote speakers.
The Joint Program for the M.A. in Art History began in 1987 between The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The program combines resources from each school and from their communities to provide a stronger program than either could offer alone. The Joint Program offered the first, and still the only, graduate degree in art history in the state of Alabama.
Image credit: Scrapbook image, late 19th century, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, no. 70×1.7, Winterthur Library, Winterthur, Delaware.
For further information, contact Rachel Dobson, communications specialist, 205/348-1893, rachel.dobson@ua.edu. The symposium webpage is here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/graduate-programs/graduate-symposium/
Symposium Program
9:00-9:30 coffee: Anderson Room, Ferguson Ctr. (302)
Session 1 9:30-11:15 Anderson Society Room (313)
Welcome and introductory comments
Caitlin Huber (UA) “Reinterpreting Alabama’s Greek Revival: The Battle House and Architecture’s Effect on Religion, Race Relations and Slavery Justification”
Celeste Paxton (UAB) “Identity, Territorial Demarcation and Self-Defense at Chaturbhujnath Nala”
Shane Harless (Tulane) “The Donna Regina Passion Frescoes: A Portrayal of the Interior Altars of Invisible Women”
11:15 to 11:30 coffee break: Anderson Room (302)
Session 2 11:30-12:30: Anderson Society Room (313)
Lauren Walter (Florida) “The Ambiguity of the Pink Dress in Later Nineteenth-Century French Painting”
Amy Williamson (UAB) “‘The Ladies’ Who Founded MoMA: How Three Female Art Collectors Created One of the World’s Leading Museums”
12:30 to 1:30 lunch: Anderson Room (302)
Session 3 1:30-3:00: Anderson Society Room (313)
Kelly Allen (UAB) “O’Keeffe’s Skyscraper Series as a Symbol of Power and Social Independence”
Rachel Fesperman (FSU) “The Devil Behind: Castrated Sodomy and the Sexuality of Uncanny Violence in Man Ray’s Monument à D.A.F. de Sade”
Megan Moore (UA) “The Forgotten Beats: Photographing a Generation”
Keynote address 3:30: Gorgas Library 205
Dr. Barbara Burlison Mooney, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Iowa
“From Jumping Jack to Jump Jim Crow: The Origins of a Pernicious Southern Stereotype?”
Reception following