This summer, Dr. Wendy Castenell has been in Chicago researching her latest book project at the Newberry Library and she sent us some photos!
Castenell, assistant professor of African American art, won a Short-Term Fellowship from the Newberry Library, sponsored by the Morrison Shearer Foundation. The fellowship supports Dr. Castenell’s research on the Chicago photographer Helen Balfour Morrison (1901-1984), whose documentary work received critical acclaim during her lifetime but which has faded from notice since. The Newberry holds the largest collection of Morrison’s work. Castenell plans to complete an article and begin research for a book project on the photographer.
Dr. Castenell teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in African American art. Her research focuses on African American art; portraiture; gender studies; representations of race and ethnicity in American visual culture; film history and theory; and cross-cultural contact. Her current book project is Creole Identity in the Art of the American South: Louisiana from the Colonial Era to Reconstruction, under contract with Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Castenell was recently named to the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association’s inaugural committee on diversity and inclusion. She has been a board member since 2018.
For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, visit our Degree Programs page.