Students, faculty and alumni of the UA department of art and art history presented current research at SECAC in October, the annual meeting of one of the largest art conferences of its kind in the US. This year’s meeting was held in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Most notably, graduate student Faith Barringer presented her research, “The Progression of Masculinity in Catherine Leroy’s Corpsman in Anguish” in the session New Approaches to the History and Practice of Photography.
Lucy Curzon (associate professor, contemporary/modern art history) presented “Living in Queer Time: The Photographs of Del LaGrace Volcano” in the session Figuring Alterity: Representations of Ambiguous and Gender Non-Conforming Bodies in Artistic Practice. Wade MacDonald (assistant professor, ceramics) presented “Convention v Invention: Digital Approaches, Inter- and Post-Disciplinary Movements in Ceramics” in the session, Contemporary Ceramics? Rachel Stephens (associate professor, American art history) presented “Reconsidering History’s Huts: A Travelogue of Thirty Plantation Sites” and Stephens co-chaired the session, American Art Open Session. Doris Sung (assistant professor, Asian art history) presented “Sirens: The Forgotten Women Artists of Contemporary Art in China in the session, Open Session for Modern and Contemporary Asian Art History. Wendy Castenell (assistant professor, African American art history) presented “Word is Bond: The Visual Weight of the Treaty in ‘The Invaders'” in the session, Seeing Words, Reading Pictures. Jonathan Cumberland (assistant professor, digital media and graphic design) presented “Can You Give a Grade to an Idea?” in the session that he chaired, What’s in an Idea? Cultivating and Assessing Creative Ideas in the Classroom. Giang Pham (assistant professor, studio foundations) presented “Small Resourceful Steps” in the session Calling All Termites!
Pete Schulte (associate professor, drawing) co-chaired the session Porous Borders IV: The Changing Face of Contemporary Drawing. Bryce Speed chaired the session Artists Research 101.
UA art alumna Karen Graffeo, whose photographs, along with her fellow artists’, made up the 2018 SECAC Artists’ Fellowship Recipient Exhibition, My Other Body: Trans-Culture, Transgender Cuba/Alabama, Karen Graffeo, Julio Larramendi, Sonja Rieger, and Carolyn Sherer, September 24 – October 19, 2019, SECAC, Chattanooga, Tenn.