Directory

Dr. Castenell joined the faculty in the fall of 2015. Prior to coming to the Capstone, she taught at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama; University of Missouri, Columbia; and University of Massachusetts Amherst. She 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. Dr. Castenell serves on the board of the journal Global Nineteenth-Century Studies published by Edinburgh University Press.

Courses Taught

• ARH 291: Special Topics in African American Art (The Black Arts Movement)
• ARH 377: American Painting and Sculpture
• ARH 378: Art of the African Diaspora
• ARH 380: American Art, 1880-1945
• ARH 388: African American Art
• ARH 488: Special Topics in African American Art (African American Portraits)
• ARH 577: Turn-of-the-Century American Spectacles and Race
• ARH 577: African American Film
• ARH 577: African American Photography

News & Media

Check out this interview with Dr. Castenell about how she became interested in art history and about her current research!

Wendy Castenell | Q&A with A&S from UA College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

Publications, Recent and Forthcoming

• Creole Identity in the Art of the American South: Louisiana from the Colonial Era to Reconstruction, book project under contract with Routledge/Taylor & Francis
• “The Architects of Reconstruction: Alcès Family Portraits as Emblems of Afro-Creole Leadership,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 6, no. 1 (Spring 2020).
• Book Review of Kymberly N. Pinder. Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), CAA.Reviews, February 15, 2018
• Book Review of Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color by Patricia Phillips Marshall and Jo Ramsey Leimenstoll, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70:2 (2011): 260-261
• “Urban Development in New Orleans, World War II to Present,” New Orleans Historic and Cultural Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 2007): 55-65, http://www.suno.edu/docs/NOHCR%20Volume%20One%20Issue%20One%20WEB.pdf, Southern University of New Orleans

Presentations and Invited Lectures

• “Reel to Real: The Trope of ‘Authenticity’ and Indigenous Sovereignty in The Invaders (1912),” Oklahoma State University, Art History Roundtable series, October 15, 2020.
• “The Architects of Reconstruction: Alcès Family Portraits as Emblems of Afro-Creole Leadership,” University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pa., October 6, 2020.
• “The Performance of Racial Identity in a Spanish Colonial Portrait from Louisiana,” CAA Annual Conference, New York, N.Y., February 13-16, 2019.
• “’The Louisiana Experiment’: Alcès Portraits and Afro-Creole Leadership during Reconstruction,” SECAC, Birmingham, Ala., October 17-20, 2018
• “Mutable Identities: The Performance of ‘Whiteness’ in a Colonial Louisiana Portrait,” Portraiture Conference, Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, Durham University, Durham, U.K., July 13-15, 2018.
• “Reenacting Defeat: Wild West Shows as Spectacles of White Supremacy,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, Pa., March 15-17, 2018.
• Moderator, “Views of the American West,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, Pa., March 15-17, 2018.
• “’The ineffaceable curse of Cain’: The Visual Culture of Gender, Race, and Caste in Antebellum New Orleans” invited lecture, Auburn University Montgomery, Montgomery, Ala., April 13, 2017.
• “Performing ‘Whiteness’: Racial Ambiguity in Spanish Colonial Louisiana,” Blake-More Godwin Lecture, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Missouri – Columbia, Columbia, Mo., March, 16, 2017.
• “Commemorating Caste: Metoyer Family Portraits as Agents of Social Equality in Antebellum Louisiana,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Charleston, S.C., February 2-4, 20017.
• “The Politics of Style: Free Artists of Color in Antebellum New Orleans,” SECAC, Roanoke, Va., October 19-22, 2016.
• “Cultivating Active Citizenship Through the Arts in the 21^st Century,” Co-presented with Dr. Lucy Curzon, Blackburn Institute Symposium, The University of Alabama, August 27, 2016.
• “’The ineffaceable curse of Cain’: The Visual Culture of Gender, Race, and Caste in Antebellum New Orleans,” Diane Legan Howard Art History Lecture Series, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Miss., March 8, 2016.
• “Celluloid Sovereignty: Representations of Native Americans and Treaty Discourse in The Invaders,” Branding the American West Symposium, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, Utah, March 4-5, 2016.
• “Virtuous Sinners: Racial Iconography in Portraits of New Orleans’ Free Women of Color,” SECAC, Pittsburgh, Pa., October 21-24, 2015
• “Iconography and Mercurial Racial Identity in Jacques Amans’ Creole Woman in a Red Turban (1840),” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Chicago, Ill., March 20-22, 2014
• “Hybridity, Creole Identity, and Portraits by Free Artists of Color in Antebellum New Orleans,” College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Symposium, Alabama State University, Montgomery, Ala., October 31, 2013
• “The Politics of Style: French Academic Style as a Statement of Creole Identity by New Orleans’ Free Artists of Color,” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Annual Conference, Fresno, Calif., March 9, 2013
• “Native Americans, Sovereignty, and Representation in Thomas H. Ince’s The Invaders (1912),” Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Conference, Sacramento, Calif., May 20, 2011.
• Recent Fellowships and Awards
• Finalist, Terra Foundation Visiting Professorship in American Art, Oxford University, Oxford, U.K., AY 2017-2018

Recent Curatorial Experience

• Co-Curator with Emily Bibb, “BAM!: Black Panther and the Black Arts Movement in the Paul R. Jones Collection,” Paul R. Jones Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Ala., summer 2018
• Curatorial Supervisor, “Color by Color,” Paul R. Jones Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Ala., spring 2018
• Curator, Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art 10th Anniversary Show (Title: TBD), Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, Ga., spring 2018
• Curatorial Supervisor, “Black is Beautiful,” Paul R. Jones Gallery of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Ala., spring 2016