About
I teach art history at St. Francis College, in Brooklyn, NY. My research interests include public art, and American art and material culture.
I wrote a book on World War I memorials, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I Memorials (2013), and articles and essays on World War I memorials, public art, and the domestic display of FDR portraits. I am on the editorial board of the journal Public Art Dialogue, which I co-edited for four years (2017-2020). I edited a volume, Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy, with Sierra Rooney and Harriet F. Senie (March 2021; paperback November 2022). I am working on a book “At Home with Political Portraits: Photographs of the Domestic Display of United States Presidents” (under contract with Lexington Books).
At St. Francis College, I teach art history and American studies to undergraduate non-majors and I chair a new Interdisciplinary Studies department. My courses include American Art, Art in NYC, Public Art, Commemorative Practices, and Art of Social Change. I especially enjoy bringing my students to museums, galleries, archives, artists’ estates, artists’ studios, and sites of public art around the city. I have written about teaching in two essays, including “(In)famous: Contemporary Lessons from History’s Heroes,” which is about teaching the two Henry Ward Beecher sculptures in Brooklyn Heights. The essay appears as a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm(2020) edited by Cameron Cartiere and Leon Tan.
My book reviews appear in a number of publications, including Woman’s Art Journal, Panorama: the Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, and the Journal of American History. Education
Williams College (BA); Stony Brook University (PhD) Work Shared in CORE
Books
Articles
Book chapters
Other Publications
“(In)famous: Contemporary Lessons from History’s Heroes,” invited contribution to
The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, edited by Cameron Cartiere and Leon Tan (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, October 2020): 164-174. [about teaching the two Henry Ward Beecher sculptures in downtown Brooklyn]
“Sculpture and Lived Space,” invited essay on the state of the field of sculpture in
Panorama, the journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 3, no. 1 (Summer 2017)
https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/state-of-the-field-studies-in-american-sculpture/sculpture-and-lived-space/
Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I Memorials (Ashgate, 2013)
“Real Art, War Art, and the Politics of Peace Memorials in the United States after World War I,” Public Art Dialogue vol. 2, no. 2 (September 2012): 162-189.
“Memorials, Motherhood, and Anti-Militarism: Bashka Paeff’s
Sacrifices of War,”
Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 29, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008): 31-40.
“Monumental Visions: Women Sculptors and World War I” in
Women and Things: Gendered Material Strategies, 1750-1950 Edited by Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 299-320.
Book & exhibit reviews appear in
Woman’s Art Journal,
The Public Historian,
Panorama, and
The Journal of American History
Projects
Current book project, “At Home with Political Portraits: Photographs of the Domestic Display of United States Presidents” (under contract with Lexington Books)
Memberships
College Art Association
Public Art Dialogue
Association of Historians of American Art
SECAC