Art History Faculty
Full-Time: Christopher Atkins | Anna Chave | William Clark | Barbara Lane | Xiaoping Lin | Michael Nelson | Edward Powers | James Saslow | Judy Sund | Warren T. Woodfin
Adjunct: Joni Hand | Eileen Krest | John Nici
Full-Time Faculty
Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins specializes in the history of early modern European art, especially that created in seventeenth century. His research interests include early modern art theory, the production and consumption of paintings, artistic subjectivity, and topologies of modernity. Atkins is currently completing his book Frans Hals’s Signature Style: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity. Future projects include a book-length study on how artists in the Dutch Golden Age consciously sought public outlets for their art in order to attract clients and secure lasting fame, as well as a book that explores how seventeenth-century European landscapes operated as vehicles for aesthetic and personal exploration in a truly modern sense.
Prior to joining the faculty at Queens College, Atkins taught at Northwestern University. He also worked for several years at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he contributed to the exhibitions Five Centuries of European Portraiture, El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, and Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter-Draftsman-Etcher.
His recent Queens College courses include Introduction to Art, Baroque Art in Italy, Baroque Art in Northern Europe, Naturalism in Seventeenth-century Northern European Art, Colloquium in Art History Methods, and The Baroque Portrait. Atkins is also a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Christopher.Atkins@qc.cuny.edu
Anna Chave
A professor of
Art History at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, Anna Chave has also taught at Harvard and Yale Universities.
She has published many essays concerned with issues of reception,
interpretation, gender, and identity, mainly with respect to 20th century art.
Recent writings include "Dis/Covering the Quilts of Gee’s Bend" (Journal
of Modern Craft [Victoria and Albert Museum], July 2008) and
"Figuring the Origins of the Modern at the Fin de Siècle: The Trope of the
Pathetic Male," in Making Art History, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield
(2007). Her artist subjects have ranged from early Picasso and O’Keeffe to
Pollock and Hannah Wilke. She is known as well for her revisionist readings of
Minimalism, including "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power" (Arts,
January 1990), "Minimalism and Biography" (Art Bulletin,
March 2000), and "Revaluing Minimalism: Patronage, Aura, and Place" (Art
Bulletin, September 2008). In addition, Chave has authored monographs on
Rothko and Brancusi (Yale University Press, 1991 and 1993). For fuller
information and downloadable versions of her writings, visit her website, annachave.com.
http://annachave.com
Anna.Chave@qc.cuny.edu
William Clark
William Clark is a professor of Art History and an internationally recognized scholar of medieval art and architecture who has published in the major journals in the field, authored four books (so far) and numerous scholarly papers published here and abroad. Clark presents three to four papers at conferences and meetings every year. He has appeared in the PBS series "The Art of the Western World," which is regularly rebroadcast, and on a Nova program with Robert Mark. His major interests focus on the conceptual thinking of medieval builders, artists and patrons, as is revealed in the works of art, revival elements in medieval architecture, and the beginnings of architectural photography in Europe.
Barbara Lane, Chair
A professor of Northern Renaissance Art, Barbara Lane has published widely on fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting, illuminated manuscripts, and printed books. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and taught at the University of Maryland and Rutgers University before joining the faculty at Queens College in 1979 and the CUNY Graduate Center in 2000. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers and was a research associate at UCLA. Lane has chaired four sessions at CAA meetings. She is the author of The Altar and the Altarpiece (New York: Harper and Row, 1984) and numerous articles in Art Bulletin, Oud-Holland, Simiolus, and other publications. Her monograph devoted to a reappraisal of the work of Hans Memling, which investigates his sources in Flemish and German painting and his influence on Italian painting of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was published in July 2009.
Barbara.Lane@qc.cuny.edu
Xiaoping Lin
Xiaoping Lin, who earned his PhD at Yale University in 1993, teaches courses on Asian art and cinema. He has published numerous critical essays on contemporary Chinese art and film in Third Text (London) and other academic journals; a recent article, "Jia Zhangke's Cinematic Trilogy: A Journey across the Ruins of Post-Mao China," appeared in Sheldon Lu and Emilie Yeh (eds.), Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (University of Hawai'i Press, February 2005). Lin is the author of Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010).
Xiaoping.Lin@qc.cuny.edu
Michael Nelson
Michael Nelson is an art historian and an active field archaeologist studying the ancient architecture of the Mediterranean. For more than a decade, he has been a member of an international team of scholars excavating at Omrit, a Roman and Early Byzantine site in northern Israel. Currently, his research focuses on the well-preserved temple complex at Omrit and its three Corinthian temples. His interests include the use and reception of Roman religious architecture and temple sculpture in the fringe areas of the empire and the transmission of stoneworking techniques. He also works at Leukos, a Roman and Early Byzantine port settlement on the Greek island of Karpathos in the Dodecanese. His research here explores insular settlement archaeology in relation to seaborne trade.
Forthcoming publications
- "Stucco Fluting the Columns of the Roman Temple at Omrit, Israel." With J. Thole. Journal of Roman Archaeology 2010.
- "A Preliminary Overview of the Architectural Remains at Omrit." In Schowalter, D. and J.A. Overman (eds), Omrit: A Preliminary Report of the Excavations. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. 2010.
Michael.Nelson@qc.cuny.edu
Michael @ People@QC
Edward Powers
Edward Powers
earned his PhD at the Institute
of Fine Arts, New York University. An assistant professor of art history, he
teaches courses focusing on modern and contemporary art. He is the co-author of
Looking at Dada, published in conjunction
with the 2006 Dada exhibition at The Museum
of Modern Art. His articles on Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism have appeared in Art
History, Oxford Art Journal, Res and Tout-Fait. His current work, focusing on Andy Warhol, is forthcoming in American
Art and Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte.
Edward.Powers@qc.cuny.edu
James Saslow
James Saslow previously taught at Columbia University, where he received his PhD in 1983, and at Vassar College; in 2004 he was the Kennedy Visiting Professor in Renaissance Studies at Smith College. His teaching and research focus on the Italian Renaissance and Baroque period, with special interests in gender and sexuality, global cross-cultural exchange, and the visual aspects of the theater. His first book,
Ganymede in the Renaissance (Yale, 1986), helped open the field of art history to serious consideration of the role of homosexuality and gender in the art and society of the early modern period. A co-founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY and a two-term co-chair of the College Art Association's Gay and Lesbian Caucus, he has lectured nationwide on homosexuality and art, particularly on
Michelangelo, whose poetry he translated (1991).
Saslow specializes further in early modern architecture, particularly theatrical design; he has created costumes and backdrops for a Baroque opera production and wrote and directed a staged adaptation of Castiglione’s famous Renaissance etiquette guide, Book of the Courtier. While a Mills Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he completed The Medici Wedding of 1589.
He wrote the
libretto for an opera based on Oscar Wilde’s novel
The Picture of Dorian
Gray, which received its world
premiere in Boston in spring 2011 (composer: Jeffrey Brody).
His most recent book, Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts (Viking-Penguin, 2001), received two awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation. Saslow is currently co-editing The Blackwell Companion to Renaissance-Baroque Art, scheduled to appear in 2012, and is working on a memoir of the early decades of gay and lesbian culture in the United States.
James.Saslow@qc.cuny.edu
Judy Sund, Deputy Chair
A native of Southern California, Judy Sund earned her BA at San Diego State University, and her PhD in art history at Columbia University. She is a modernist who specializes in the art and architecture of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries in Europe and the United States. She is particularly well known for her work on Van Gogh, having published two books on that artist (True to Temperament: Van Gogh and French Naturalist Literature, 1992, and Van Gogh: Art and Ideas, 2002), in addition to several essays. Professor Sund's secondary field of interest is the art and architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas. Her current research interests include exoticisms in Western art, visual artists' responses to texts, and intersections of "high art" and popular culture (e.g. advertising, fashion, popular entertainment).
judysund@mac.com
Warren T. Woodfin
Warren Woodfin’s research focuses on the art and archaeology of Byzantium and its cultural sphere in the eleventh through fifteenth centuries. For the past several years, he has been collaborating with a research team of U.S. and Ukraine based scholars to study a medieval burial complex in the Black Sea steppe. The site, called the Chingul Kurgan, yielded a trove of medieval textiles, precious metalwork, and other artifacts interred with a nomadic leader of the thirteenth century. His recent article on the project (co-authored with Renata Holod and Yuriy Rassamakin) appears in Ars Orientalis 38 (2010), pp. 153-184. His book on Byzantine textiles and their role in ritual and hierarchy, The Embodied Icon: Vestments and Sacred Power in Byzantium, is scheduled to appear late this fall from Oxford University Press. He has also published articles in the journals Gesta and Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and has contributed essays to various edited volumes, including the Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue Byzantium: Faith and Power 1261-1557, ed. Helen Evans (New York, 2004).
Prior to joining the faculty at Queens College, Woodfin held teaching and research posts at Duke, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum, and, most recently, a European Research Council-sponsored fellowship at the University of Zurich.
Warren.Woodfin@qc.cuny.edu
Adjunct Faculty
John Nici
An adjunct at Queens College since 1990, John Nici has taught courses over a wide range of the curriculum, from medieval art to Impressionism. He has specialized in art history pedagogy and has published several texts on the subject, including Advanced Art History (2004) and Barron’s Guide to the AP Art History Exam (2008). He serves as a consultant to the College Board on art history and a question leader in the grading of the Advanced Placement exams, which over 20,000 students now take. Nici has also published articles and delivered talks on a number of subjects, including Delacroix and medieval crowns. In 2004 he was granted the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by Adjunct Faculty by Queens College.
