Jay Buchanan

Jay Buchanan is a doctoral candidate working on global contemporary art, LGBTQ+ art, photography and performance, and histories of empire, infrastructure, industry, and commerce. His writing appears in Source: Notes in the History of Art,  ASAP/Journal and its e-companion ASAP/J, Chiricú: The Journal of Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, Theatre History Studies, Miranda, and elsewhere. Jay's dissertation centers bathers and bathing in queer and trans* visual cultures, engaging themes of exoticism, techno-imperialism, the politics of the nude, and sanitation infrastructure and policy since 1830.

Jay holds the Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellowship in American Culture Studies and completed a doctoral certificate in American Culture Studies. His major area is global contemporary art, and he completed a doctoral minor in nineteenth-century European art. Jay holds a Master of Arts degree in Theater and Performance Studies from Washington University and delivered the student commencement address in 2021. He majored in Theater and Politics at Wake Forest University. 

Jay's research and curatorial practice have been recognized with the Gloria Anzaldúa Award for Advocacy at the Intersections. A curator and arts administrator with investments across disciplines, Jay has worked with the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Luminary, transdisciplinary migration studies initiative Moving Stories, stArt Gallery and the Wake Forest University Art Galleries and Collections, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, Carve literary journal, the independent Perennial Press, the MFA program in the Visual Arts and the College of Architecture in the Sam Fox School, the Performing Arts Department at Washington University, the Interdisciplinary Performance and the Liberal Arts Center (IPLACe) and the Transformative Arts Project at Wake Forest University, and GoLive Theater Projects (the primary theater access organization operating on the London West End). Jay is a past co-chair of the Queer and Trans Caucus for Art (QTCA) of the College Art Association (CAA) and has served a term on the Association's Board of Readers in support of the annual conference. Jay was a founding contributor to the Projects Archive of practicing artist Lynn Book, an interactive research map of community arts initiatives at the US-Mexico border led by Dr. Ila Sheren, and the collective sonic arts project Idiosynchrony. He represented graduate and professional students on the Board of Trustees at Washington University (2020-2021) and is a recipient of the Barbara Pollard-Stein Award for Excellence in Teaching (2024). 

Jay is on leave from the program for the 2024-2025 academic year, pursuing a graduate curatorial and collections management internship in the Department of Photographs of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.