Graduate Students
Julia Barber
Julia received her B.A. in Art History and French from Swarthmore College in 2009. During her time at Swarthmore, she completed a French-language thesis on Eugène Atget, inspired in part by her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with that institution's magnificent collection of Atget's photographs. After graduation, Julia worked as a curatorial assistant at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she honed her interest in museum and exhibition theory. At Brown, she studies the Linked Ring and other organizations fighting for the acknowledgement of photography as a fine art at the turn of the twentieth century.
Contact: Julia_Barber@brown.edu
Monica Bravo
Monica is a third-year doctoral candidate specializing in the history of photography, within the modern art and American art traditions. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Dartmouth College in 2004, and M.A. in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University in 2009. She has held positions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Her research focuses on the Mexican oeuvres of the American photographers Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, and Helen Levitt, and the reception of their modernist works by Mexican audiences between the world wars.
Conact: Monica_Bravo@brown.edu
Alexandra Collins
Alexandra Collins is a first year graduate student specializing in the history of photography. She received her BA in Art History and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. Her undergraduate honors thesis, “Not So Beautiful: A Contextual Analysis of Martha Rosler’s Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful,” examined Rosler’s politically motivated series of photomontages on the Vietnam War. She presented a version of this project focusing on the feminist implications of Rosler’s series at the South Eastern College Art Conference in 2010 entitled “False Dichotomies: Martha Rosler’s Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful.” At Brown, she plans to focus on post-1950 American photography. In particular, she is interested the issues of individual and group identity and the construction of photographic narratives.
Contact: Alexandra_Collins@brown.edu
Sara Hayat
Contact: Sara_Hayat@brown.edu
Emily Handlin
Emily is a fourth-year graduate student focusing on the history of photography. She received her B.A. in Classical Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 2004 and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Arizona in 2009. Her research explores Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic motion studies and intersections between art and science in Philadelphia during the late 19th century.
Contact: Emily_Handlin@Brown.edu
Mazie McKenna Harris
History of Photography, Ph.D. candidate
Mazie holds a B.A. in Art History from Trinity University and a M.A. in Art History, with a specialization in Modern Art, from Boston University. Her research into responses to graphic and photographic technologies has been supported by the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, Massachusetts Historical Society, New York Public Library, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, Winterthur Museum & Library, American Antiquarian Society, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the 2009—2010 academic year, Mazie coordinated Photography Beyond the Visual, a graduate student workshop and lecture series. She is currently finishing a dissertation which traces the impact of intellectual property laws on the development of photography in the United States. Her other research interests include portraiture, printmaking, and collaborative art practice. She is currently a curatorial assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
Contact: Mazie_Harris@brown.edu
Amy Huang
Amy Huang joined Brown University in 2010. She specializes in Chinese art history and her main interest is in literati painting and collecting practice of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Before coming to Brown, Amyc ompleted her BA in Management Information Systems in National Chengchi University, Taiwan (2004). After college education, her interest in museums brought her to the UK where she received a MA in Museum Studies from University College London,University of London(2005). Amy came to the United States in 2008 to pursue graduate studies in the history of art. She received a MA in Asian Art History from Boston University in 2010 with a paper on the collecting practice of 17th century Chinese collector Gao Shiqi.Amy have received funding from the Henry Luce Foundation (2008-2009), and worked as curatorial intern in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Peabody Essex Museum.
Contact: Amy_Huang@brown.edu
I-Fen Huang
I-Fen Huang received her MA from National Taiwan University (2002), specializing in Chinese painting and textile. In 2001 she co-organized an exhibition for a private collection in Taiwan and co-authored the catalogue Enchanting Images: Late Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Shih-t'ou Shu-wu Collection. She started her study in US at New York University and worked as a graduate intern at the International Center of Photography in New York (2003-2004) before coming to Brown. Since joining the program here, she has continued her work on pictorial textile of late imperial China. Part of her research is presented at the Tenth Biennial Symposium of Textile Society of America (2006): “Wife’s Works, Husband’s Words: An Album of Gu Family Embroidery from Late Imperial China.” Focusing on the Gu family style embroidery made in seventeenth-century Shanghai and other regions in southeast China in the succeeding two centuries, her dissertation will explore issues such as the commodification of literati culture, and interrelationship between needlecraft and gender in late imperial China.
Contact: I-Fen_Huang@Brown.edu
Alexis Jackson
Alexis Jackson is a first year student studying Medieval architecture and material culture. She received her B.A. with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, where she studied European History, Art History, and Classical Studies. In 2011, she participated in the Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project, studying the Bronze Age Aegean, which inspired her interest in archaeology. Alexis’ interests include the study of medieval hospitals and monastic outbuildings (such as hospitals and guesthouses). She is particularly interested in the utilization of GIS and emerging technologies in the re-imaging and re-evaluation of monastic space.
Contact: Alexis_Jackson@Brown.edu
Wei Jiang
Contact: Wei_Jiang@Brown.edu
Alice Klima
Alice began her undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota and finished her B.A. at Lake Forest College in Illinois. She obtained an MA in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee before deciding on a career in Art History. She continued studies at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in Art History and received her MA in Art History before beginning the Ph.D. program in the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. Currently she is working on her dissertation titled, “The Last Bishop of Prague and the Foundation of the Monastery of Augustinian Canons at Roudnice on the Elbe, Bohemia.” Her interests include Central European Medieval architecture, monastic culture, the transmission of style and architecture in medieval Europe. As a Czech native, she is most interested in medieval Bohemia and issues of nationality and identity in medieval culture.
Contact: Alice_Klima@Brown.edu
Ruth Lo
Ruth W. Lo is a Ph.D. candidate studying the history of architecture and urbanism. She holds a B.A. in Architecture and a B.A. in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where she spent a year studying at the University of Bologna in Italy. She worked at Steven Holl Architects for several years prior to returning to graduate school at Cornell University, where she received her M.A. in the History of Architecture and Urban Development. Her current research is on food, architecture, and urban planning of Rome during the first decades of the twentieth century.
Contact: Ruth_Lo@Brown.edu
Emilia Mickevicius
Emilia Mickevicius is a first year student studying the history and theory of photography. She received a B.A. with Honors from the University of Chicago in 2011, where she studied art history and visual art. In her undergraduate thesis she examined the modernist photographer Paul Strand’s The Mexican Portfolio and subsequent film projects. She also interned at the Art Institute of Chicago in the departments of Prints & Drawings and Photography. Emmy’s interests include western American landscape photography and the historical formulation and usage of terms such as picturesque and documentary; the legacy and impact of the 1975 George Eastman House show New Topographics; the rise of color in art photography; and the relationship of photography to other media, especially film and painting.
Contact: Emilia_Mickevicius@Brown.edu
Emily Chace Morash
Status: Fourth Year
Emily received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and Italian Language and Literature (2004), where she spent a year studying in Florence, Italy. Emily then received her M.A. from the University of Virginia in Architectural History (2006). Her M.A. Thesis is titled, “The Città Universitaria and Cultivating a National Identity: Fascist-sponsored Urban Projects and Architecture in Rome.” Emily has worked at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and is the former president of the Thomas Jefferson Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. She has taught for the Historic Preservation Program for RISD’s Continuing Education Department, and is currently a visiting instructor at Connecticut College. Emily’s dissertation, Rethinking Italian Domestic Architecture: Gio Ponti, Milan, and Lo Stile, 1941-1947, examines the development of domestic architecture in the final years of the fascist period and the Second World War and into the immediate postwar period. Her research interests include modern domestic architecture, the role media (film, periodicals, and other publications) plays in the development of modern architecture, and the publicity of modern architecture through exhibitions. Emily has presented her research at the NESAH Student Symposium and at the Annual Meetings of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Contact: Emily_Morash@Brown.edu
Kristen Oehlrich
Kristen Oehlrich is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Brown University. Her teaching and research interests focus on the history of photography, film, visual culture, and the intersections of modern and contemporary American and European art. Her dissertation examines Walker Evans’s formative years in photography, 1926-1938, in the context of transatlanticism, theory, literature, and politics. Kristen received her M.A. in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University (2002). She has held positions at the Museum of Modern Art, the RISD Museum, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and has taught art history and theory at Parsons, The School of Visual Arts, Brown University, and RISD. Kristen was a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Studies, and a selected member of the Beinecke Library Master Class at Yale University in photography and archival research. She has been a recipient of fellowships from the Victorian Society in America as well as the DAAD for research and teaching at the Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany. This year, she is co-chair of the Visual Culture Caucus Committee at the College Art Association.
Contact: Kristen_Oehlrich@brown.edu
Sarah Rovang
Sarah is currently a third year Ph.D. student in the History of Art and Architecture. She received her BA in Architectural History from the University of Virginia in 2010. Her undergraduate thesis, “Central Avenue and the Route 66 Cultural Corridor,” examines the preservation and interpretation of an iconic American highway within the civic framework of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her qualifying paper, "The Electrified Farm: Science and Consumer Culture at the 1939 New York World's Fair" follows an attempt to use modern architecture to sell a new consumer lifestyle to America's rural population. Her research interests include the architecture of World's Fairs, the influence of technology and electricity on the American built environment, and as well as the role of the New Deal shaping a new public landscape.
Contact: Sarah_Rovang@brown.edu
Joseph Silva
Ph.D. candidate, Brown University
M.A., Syracuse University, Florence, Italy
B.A., Wheaton College, Norton, MA
I study the visual and material culture of Renaissance Italy with a specific focus on ducal Tuscany. My dissertation explores the artistic programs associated with the Naval Knighthood of Saint Stephen in Pisa and Florence.
Contact: Joseph_Silva@Brown.edu
Rebecca Szantyr
Contact: Rebecca_Szantyr@brown.edu
Lisa Tom
Lisa's diverse interests led her to double major in Art History and Art Media (Computing) and minor in Asian Studies at UCSD (2001). Her commitment to the History of Art prevailed, and in 2005, she received her M.A. from UCLA with an emphasis on the Italian Renaissance and minors in Classical and Japanese arts. While at UCLA, she has had the pleasure of contributing to the online image database of the Monastic Matrix and serving on the editorial board of Comitatus. Soon after, she catapulted to the East Coast to continue her studies at Brown University. Her interests include early modern issues of gender, nationality, court cultures, and discourses on art. For the moment, her dissertation focuses on portraiture, masculinities, and military history in early modern Italy.
Contact: Lisa_Tom@Brown.edu
Veronica Totos
Vera received a B.A. from Colgate University and an M.A. in Art History from Williams College. She wrote her Master's Thesis on Hungarian cinema, titled "Camera Choreography and Empathy in Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies." She entered Brown in 2009, where she studies nineteenth and early twentieth century film and photography. Her interests include history of animation, the changing views on the objectivity of photographs, montage and manipulation of film footage. Her qualifying paper, titled "Mechanizing Vision: Vertov and the Camera-Eye" focused on Dziga Vertov's views on the camera as a machine suited for the exploration of "truth" of the visible world. Vera participated in curating the exhibition "Reading Ritual: Festival Books from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection," and contributed an essay on the 1856 coronation book of tsar Alexander II of Russia. She was member of the organizing committee for the graduate student symposium titled "The Human Scale: Bodies, Space, Perception, and Interaction" in 2010.
Nathaniel Walker
After growing up in the Philippines and Arkansas, among other places, Nathaniel studied History as an undergrad and then earned his MA in Architectural History at the Savannah College of Art & Design. His Master's Thesis, entitled "Savannah's Lost Squares," won the Outstanding Graduate Thesis Document Award—half of it was published in the December 2011 issue of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and the other half will be released in early 2013 in the edited volume Ordnance: War + Architecture & Space, published by Ashgate. After working for two years at Mitchell/Matthews Architects & Planners in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a draftsman, researcher, and urban designer, Nathaniel entered Brown University's Ph.D. program in the Fall of 2008 in order to work with Professor Dietrich Neumann on the relationships between nineteenth- and early-twentieth century utopian novels and emerging practices in modern architecture. In 2011 he curated the Bell Gallery exhibition Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future, which featured a range of historic and contemporary design concepts, ranging from politicalmanifestoes to whisky advertisements, selected for their ability to cast light on the different desires that motivate humans to construct concepts of the future. His goals as a writer and teacher are to explore how it is that humans imagine and construct their dreams of the "best-possible world," and how these dreams affect the design and reception of architecture and urbanism in the here-and-now. This has led him to explore a diverse range of architectural visions drawn fromdiverse traditions such the Classic Maya, Classical Daoist, and Turkish Republic, but his main focus has been, and remains, on the historic (and historicist) formation of "modernity."
Contact: Nathaniel_Walker@brown.edu
Kelly Whitford
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Kelly received her B.A in Art History from Carleton College (2006) and her M.A. in Art History from the University of Oregon (2011). Her work focuses on Rome during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Specifically, Kelly’s research examines Church rituals and ceremonies (especially pilgrimage), and the ways in which these performances incorporated statues, architecture, and public space.
Contact: Kelly_Whitford@brown.edu