PhD Students Report Successes and Progress

Allison Perelman, specializing in the art and decorated spaces of late nineteenth-century Europe, completed her major comps exam and successfully defended her dissertation prospectus.  She is currently at work on her dissertation, titled "Private Space, Public Self: Studios of the Avant-Garde in Fin-de-Siècle France."

Tola Porter, a specialist in modern public sculpture from the mid-to-late twentieth century, has been chosen as the recipient of the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence for 2019-2020.  Follow this link for more about this well-deserved honor!

Yue Dai, specializing in Chinese art in the Ming and Qing dynasties, has a paper titled "From Forgery to Prototype: The Reverse Role of the Baimiao Version of the Spring Morning in the Han Palace" coming out in Beyond Versimilitude: Unscrolling Facsimiles of Chinese Masterpieces, a special edition journal by History of Art Students' Association at The University of Toronto.  In January, she was invited to give a talk to the Chinese association "Scholars of Art Theory."  That talk was titled "The Art of Discipline and Study of Art History in U.S. Higher Education."  Last October, she also joined a roundtable, invited by the podcast Naïve Café of China, called "Japanese Prints: A Carnival Produced by Publishers and Fans Economy?"

Julie James, a specialist in Italian Renaissance Art, co-authored a chapter with Sheila Barker titled "Art as a Conduit for Nuns' Networks: The Case of Suor Teresa Berenice Vitelli at S. Apollonia in Florence," which appeared in the volume Convent Networs in Early Modern Italy, edited by S. Weddle and M. Dunn and published with Brepols Press.  Follow this link for more information on the volume.

Lindsay Sheedy, the 2020-2021 recipient of the Samuel H. Kress / Donald & Maria Cox Rome Prize, is currently in-residence at the American Academy in Rome until early August 2021. In addition to her fellowship, Lindsay is presenting a paper at the 2021 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, where she will present a paper entitled “A Feast for Worms: The Rise and Fall of the Presepe in Early Modern Naples,” which aims to recover the place of large-scale nativity scenes (called presepi) in the religious and artistic landscape of early modern Naples. On a similar note, Lindsay is awaiting the publication of her essay, "Worms Cannot Eat Stone: The Pugliese Presepe and the Materiality of Devotion in Early Modern Puglia" in Polychrome Art in the Early Modern World, edited by Ilenia Colón Mendoza and Lisandra Estevez, which will appear as part of Routledge's Visual Culture in Early Modernity Series. Her essay considers the materiality of Pugliese nativity scenes as a reflection of the devotional and cultural landscape of early modern Puglia.

As part of her fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Lindsay recently gave a shoptalk on her project.  For the full video, please see the American Academy in Rome's Youtube page.