History of Art and Architecture Graduate Student Profiles

Lizi Anderson-Cleary

Lizi Anderson-Cleary

Lizi studies modern Latin American and European art, exploring the ways in which war, revolution, and political upheaval shape avant-garde movements. Her research also examines decolonial feminism and its ties to political ecology, analyzing their impact on artistic expression and cultural narratives.

 

lcleary@uoregon.edu

 

Gabriela Chitwood

Photo of Gabby Chitwood

Gabriela is interested in Medieval art with an emphasis on gothic architecture and the architecture of religious spaces. She is particularly interested in thinking about how people use and engage with space. She approaches this research seeking to leverage technology as a research tool wherever possible.

gchitwoo@uoregon.edu

 


Alexa Davidson

Alexa Davidson

Alexa is interested in Greek Architecture with an emphasis on the Late Classical to Hellenistic period. They are particularly interested in how Greek culture is interpreted and hybridized with other cultures across the Mediterranean and how these interactions affect the built environment. 

aledav@uoregon.edu


Lauren Dawson

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Lauren's main research-interests include Japanese pottery, architecture, folklore, Shinto, illustrations/paintings, and manga. Lauren is also interested in the textiles of kimonos and yukatas, though she has not had the chance to delve into this area yet. Lauren doesn't focus on a specific period or region as she believes they are all interconnected. She is instead drawn to the close connection that Japan as a country and culture have with nature, the craftsman/workshops, and how this is seen in their art from the rough and natural pottery styles to the wood/timber “traditional” buildings to the spirits that reside in almost everything around them.

ldaw@uoregon.edu


Tania Delgado Hernandez

Tania Delgado Hernandez

Coming from a Fine Arts background, Tania is interested in exploring beyond the Eurocentric  
canon of study of the History of Art. Among her broad artistic interests, she is intrigued by the  
research of Asian art, history, and culture, particularly in South and North Korea and Japan. Within  
her focus, she explores the gender dynamics in her studies from a feminist perspective.

taniadel@uoregon.edu

Aidyn Dervaes

Aidyn Dervaes

Aidyn studies contemporary art with a focus on how it preserves narratives and fosters connections among people. Aidyn intends to explore how modern artistic practices can capture and communicate diverse experiences and histories. Her academic journey is led by a deep commitment to understanding how art serves as a bridge between individuals, illuminating shared human experiences. Aidyn’s study reflects her belief in the transformative power of art to connect and inspire.

adervaes@uoregon.edu

Stormy Dubois

Stormy Dubois

Stormy studies Early Modern European visual culture with a particular interest in religious artwork. She is interested in the relationship between imaged martyrs and body relics, the performance of gender in daily life, and how both may be explored through depictions of death.

sdubois@uoregon.edu


Mary Edwards

Mary Edwards

Mary Edwards is actively pursuing her MA in History of Art & Architecture at the University of Oregon. Edwards is determined to obtain her PhD after completing her Masters degree. While she is interested in museum studies and curation, her ultimate goal is to become an art and art history professor. 

 

mare@uoregon.edu

Emily Erickson

Emily Erickson

Emily studies ancient Mediterranean art with an emphasis on the material culture of the eastern Roman provinces. She is particularly interested in exploring how architecture and space express cultural identity on the periphery of empire and in areas of hybridity.

eerickso@uoregon.edu


Michelle Fieser

Michelle Fieser

My interests are in Modern American architecture, National and State Parks, and Environmental History. Specifically, I study the relationship between wilderness advocacy and park landscape and architectural design.

mfieser@uoregon.edu


Kristen Freissle

Kristen Friessle

Kristen Freissle studies Ancient Roman art with a primary focus on bathing practices in antiquity. Her research analyzes how Italian bath house art and architecture work in conjunction with one another to produce an ethereal experience for the bather when viewed simultaneously during the early centuries of the Roman Empire.

kristenf@uoregon.edu


Margaryta Golovchenko

Margaryta Golovchenko

Margaryta Golovchenko (she/her) is interested in 18th and 19th century French art, with a focus on portraits of women with animals. Her broader research focus includes human-animal relationships, posthumanism, queer-ecology, and object-oriented ontology. She is a settler-immigrant from Toronto, Canada and received an HBA from the University of Toronto (Specialist: Art History, Major: Comparative Literature) and an MA in Art History with a Curatorial Studies Diploma from York University. She is also a poet and freelance critic.

mgolovch@uoregon.edu


Mew Jiang

Mew Jiang

Mew Jiang studies the reinterpretation of signs and meaning-making of images in designs of the Latin-Italo/Portuguese-patterned karuta Japanese playing cards in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan. Mew’s research interests include Edo-period visual and material culture, interregional exchange of art and design in premodern East Asia, and contemporary museum practices for East Asian art.

mewj@uoregon.edu


Jessica M. Johnson

Jessica Johnson

Jessica M. Johnson studies Early Modern art with an emphasis on 17th and 18th-century British art and its global contexts. She is particularly interested in portraiture and the visual representation of people of color during this period.

jjohns32@uoregon.edu


Jon Kerr

Jon Kerr

Jon Kerr studies ancient Mediterranean art and material culture with an interest in the intersection of race, gender, and social status in the representations of the sub-elite, particularly those involved in food production. Additionally, he is enthusiastic about cultural exchange and hybridity in art.

jonk@uoregon.edu


Harper Loeb

Harper Loeb

Harper Loeb studies art of the Americas with an emphasis on 19th-century American landscape painting. She is particularly interested in using landscape painting to reconstruct historic forest conditions in the northeastern U.S.

hloeb@uoregon.edu


Patricia McCall

Patricia McCall

Patricia McCall studies Medieval art with a special emphasis on sacred spaces in Christian and Jewish structures. She is particularly interested in the creation of sacrality and the ways in which buildings can function as multivalent spaces.

pkrupin3@uoregon.edu


Emily Moore

Emily Moore

Emily Moore studies modern and avant-garde art with an emphasis on early abstract film and livres d'artistes. She is interested in creative collaboration, the role of the spectator and processes of production. Outside of her graduate studies, Emily works as an archivist in Special Collections and University Archives at UO Libraries. 

mlemoore@uoregon.edu


Ali Nemati Abkenar

Ali Nemati Abkenari

 

Coming from an Archaeology background, Ali studies cultural exchange and the mutual cultural and artistic relationships between the Iranian world, Central Asia, and East Asia, particularly the regions along the various branches of the Silk Road, based on archaeological data and findings such as pottery, textiles, and paintings. His research interests also include the study of artistic innovations in Iranian art and architecture during the Qajar era (1789-1925) in Iran. Additionally, he is interested in examining the Iranian society's perception of the concept of art and its significance and importance during the Islamic period, with an emphasis on the scholarly value of less-studied sources such as mystical and philosophical texts written in Persian and Arabic

anematia@uoregon.edu


Raechel Root

Raechel Root

Raechel Root’s work focuses on the intersection of modern and contemporary art and issues of space, landscape, urbanism, and environment. Within that realm, she has researched land-based practices, participatory art and design, aesthetics of gentrification, critical cartography, queer ecology, feminist spatial practice, flanerie, public art, and contemporary architecture.

rhr@uoregon.edu


Rebecca Schultz

Headshot of Rebecca Schultz

Rebecca Schultz is interested in exploring the structures of meaning encoded in the visual representation of women in French prints and engravings produced during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Her research examines the complex interplay between visual rhetoric and social upheaval and its far-reaching impact on political discourse, legislative frameworks, and systems of power. She has also cultivated an interest in the broader theoretical and philosophical inquiries into the ontology of art and the fungibility of the meaning of art when it becomes a financial asset.

Rebecca earned a BA from UC Berkeley and worked as a content manager and editor in tech. She currently works for the Composition Program in the Department of English at the University of Oregon.

schultzr@uoregon.edu 


Tatymn Snider

Tatymn Snider

Tatymn (they/them) studies ancient Mediterranean art. They are primarily interested in sculpture and exploring how the medium evolved during the Hellenistic era, particularly with a focus on the diversity of bodies that emerged within the material culture. They are also a proponent of implementing computing and various digital technologies in humanities research, including for art history.

tatymns@uoregon.edu


Tori Stevenson

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Tori studies Modern art with an emphasis in Surrealism and international avant-gardes. She is particularly interested in exploring the non-Eurocentric movements of Surrealism and the intersection between art and politics during times of civil unrest.

toris@uoregon.edu


Joseph Sussi

Joseph Sussi

Joe Sussi is interested in the art of the Americas with an emphasis on contemporary environmental art practices, post-nature, ecocritical art history, land-use politics, nuclear aesthetics, and truth-formation.

jsussi@uoregon.edu


Yang Wei

Yang Wei profile picture

Yang was an architect before attending University of Oregon. Her interest focuses on ancient Chinese art and architecture. She likes investigating ordinary people’s daily life reflected in those art works. She is also curious about the relationship between architecture and the environment, particularly in the traditional Chinese gardens.

yaw@uoregon.edu


Shiying Xiao

Shiying Xiao Profile Photo

Shiying Xiao studies ancient Buddhist art with an emphais on Buddhist cosmology. She is particularly interested in visual representation of Buddhist cosmology in body mandalas, maps, sculptures and other artistic mediums and its geographical transmission across South Asia and East Asia, as well as its influence and interactions with other religions’ cosmic ideas. Additionally, she is enthusiastic about ancient Chinese art. She is also a painter.

shiying@uoregon.edu