Ph.D., Department of Art History, Binghamton University (SUNY), 2007
M.A., Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2000
B.A., Department of Art History, College of Charleston, SC, 1996

Research

Interests
My research focuses on Early Modern Art and Architecture in Latin America and Europe, with an emphasis on the relationship between the built form and urban environments, as they pertain to the formation of identities, whether state, individual, gendered, or indigenous.  I am particularly interested in the artistic negotiations that occurred in response to the foreign colonial encounter and domestically as result of the rise of the Spanish imperial state in attempts to understand how Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture evolved during the early modern period. My teaching reflects my research interest as my courses analyze the visual cultures of Renaissance and Baroque Europe alongside those of Pre-Contact America and Viceregal Hispanic America.

Current Projects
Currently I have several projects in progress including a book project that examines the sixteenth-century Spanish Renaissance style, the Plateresque, both in Iberia and in colonial Latin America.  In the project, “The Migration of Style: The Plateresque and the Hispanic American Palace,” I consider issues of intentionality in art patronage while investigating how the Plateresque was used conventionally in Hispanic American architecture, and, more importantly, I also identify how the style became a signifier of the new Hispanic American culture, as exemplified in the façade of the Casa de Montejo (ca. 1542-490) in Mérida, Yucatán. I argue that the colonial Plateresque, which was just one of the many styles available to the early conquerors, was exploited by its patrons to express new modes of self-representation that were only appropriate for Hispanic America.  With this project, I explore the formation of a uniquely Hispanic American art style as derived from its American setting rather than its former European context. My research, then, focuses on how meaning is produced through the reception of architecture in the complex multicultural environments of the Hispanic world.

Selected Publications

Publications:
“The Palace Façade and the Urban Form in the Documenting of Hispanic America.”  Terrae Incognitae: The Journal for the History of Discoveries 43, no. 1(2011), 5-25.

“The Rhetoric of Authority: The Casa de Montejo in Mérida, Yucatán.” RACAR: Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review 35, no. 2 (2010): 5-20.

“Exploring a Female Legacy: Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera and the Casa de Montejo Façade.”  In Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America, eds. Richard Phillips and Kellen Kee McIntyre, 369-395. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Press, 2006.

Works in Progress:
“Yucatán’s Gothic History in the Sixteenth Century: A Critical Revaluation.”(essay for anthology, eds. Paul Neill and Richard Sundt)
“The Migration of Style: The Plateresque and the Casa de Montejo.” (book project in progress)
“Normalizing Race, Society, and Empire: The Other Uses For Cartographic Forms in the Hispanic World.” (article in progress)

“Traditions and Reception in Sixteenth-Century Yucatán: The Maya and the Casa de Montejo.” (manuscript in progress)

Grants & Awards

Academic Development Fund New Research and Scholarly Initiatives Award, UWO (2009-10), Project: “Exploration in Hispanic and Italian Urbanism and Architecture in the Patronage of Leone Leoni.”

International Curriculum Fund, UWO (2009-10), Project: “Power of Place in the Built Environment of Viceregal Mexico.”

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Internal Research Grant UWO (2009-10), Project: “Investigation into the Origins of 16th-Century Hispanic American Urbanism.”

SSHRC, Internal Travel Grant, UWO (2009).

Edilia and François-Auguste de Montêquin Junior Fellowship, The Society of Architectural Historians (2004), Project: “Colonial Contradictions in the Casa de Montejo and Mérida.”

Teaching

PhD Supervision
Co-Supervisor
Aarnoud Rommens, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, UWO (on going). PhD Thesis: “Constellations of Contestation: Avant-Garde Regimes of Visibility/Legibility North and South.” Co-supervision with Assoc. Professor Allan Pero, Department of English, UWO.

Departmental Examiner
Andres Villar, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Jul. 2011). PhD Thesis: “On the Cusp: Latin American Visual Arts in the 1920s.”

Masters Supervision
MA Thesis Chair:
Geddesa Mahabir, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2011). Thesis: “The Construction of the Late-Renaissance Individual.”

Rosanna Mortillaro, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2010). Thesis: “Built Form and Meaning in the Sixteenth Century: The Urban Renewal of Rome and the Building Campaigns initiated under Pope Sixtus V.”

Simon Bentley, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (ongoing). Thesis: “Dance of Dance: The Work of Jack Chambers and Antonio López García.”

Second Reader:
Claire Feagan, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2010).  MA Thesis: “Surrealist Castle Culture: Gothic Traces in Surrealist Aesthetics.”

Julia Cyr, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Apr. 2010).  MA Thesis: “Visions of Power: The Art Patronage of Duke Cosimo I de’Medici in Sixteenth-Century Florence.”

Danielle Manning, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Jun. 2009).  MA Thesis: “Naturalism Re-visioned: The Role of Mirrors and Reflection in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings.”

Departmental Examiner:
Emma Arenson, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Sep. 2011). MA Thesis: “The Fragmentation as Representation of Disability in Monuments.”

Lea Bucknell, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2011). MFA Thesis: “Folly Buildings: Adhocism and the White Cube.”

Erin Rothstein,  Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2010).  MA Thesis: “Pablo Picasso and Primitivism: An Exploration of ‘Non-Western’ and Medieval Influences in Les Demoiselle d’Avignon.”

Maria Szabo, Department of Visual Arts, UWO (Aug. 2008). MA Thesis: “Kaleidoscope Vision: Modern Perspectives in the Work of Pegi Nicol MacLeod.”

Recent Courses:
2010-2011
VAH 1040: A History of Art and Visual Culture
VAH 2262F: Baroque Art History
VAH 3391G: The Visual Arts in the U.S. to 1900
VAH 9551G/9656G: Graduate Seminar: The Monument in the Pre-Modern World

2010
VAH 2256E: Northern Renaissance Art History
VAH 3391G: Women of Renaissance and Baroque Art

2008-2009
VAH 2558E: Italian Renaissance Art History
VAH 4456F: The Visual Arts in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Spanish and Aztec Encounter
VAH 9556G/9656G: The Palace in Latin America