Clara Maria Apostolatos (she/her)

Clara Maria Apostolatos is a master’s student at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Prior to joining the Institute, she earned a BA in Art History from Columbia University. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art of the Hemispheric Americas, Institutional Critique, and the politics of memory. She has assisted with exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Center for Italian Modern Art, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Her other curatorial work includes “Kenneth Kemble and Silvia Torras: The Formative Years, 1956-63,” organized through the Institute of Studies of Latin American Art. She has written for The Brooklyn Rail, Artsy, Cultured Magazine, Intervenxions, and Vistas.

 

Francesca Bisi (she/her)

Francesca earned a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she double-majored in art history and Italian studies. There, Francesca interned at the Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery, as well as with Mus.e while studying abroad in Florence. After graduating, Francesca earned an MSc in History from the University of Edinburgh, for which she was awarded the Fennell Masters Scholarship. She subsequently returned to the United States, where she is currently earning an MA in Art History and Museum Studies at Tufts University. Francesca is interested in 15th and 16th century art, particularly in the context of northern Italian courts.

 

Brianne Chapelle (she/her)

Brianne Chapelle is an art historian, museum worker, and graduate student at Hunter College (CUNY) pursuing her Masters in Art History. She earned her Bachelors in Art History from McGill University in Montreal in 2018 and has since held roles in the curatorial departments of the Harvard Art Museums; The Menil Collection; and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where she currently works. She specializes in modern and contemporary art with research interests in feminist, queer, and postcolonial artistic practices; literary artists and bildungsromane; institutional histories and critique broadly defined; and pedagogy and intersections of the museum and the academy.

 

Jie Chen (she/her) and Badie Khaleghian (he/him)

Jie Chen started the doctoral program in philosophy at Rice in 2018. Her primary research interest is Ancient Greek Philosophy. She is currently developing a dissertation on Aristotle’s “ἐνέργεια-based” pleasure. She is also interested in moral psychology, ethics and feminist philosophy. Outside of philosophy, Jie enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and taking road trips, and cherishes the time spent with her child, Peri.

Badie Khaleghian is a composer and multimedia artist interested in collaborative and innovative storytelling projects to ignite imaginations, conversations, and experiences. He creates performances embracing the intersection of art, cultures, science, technology, and people. His works have been included in festivals such as the Atemporanea Festival (Buenos Aires City, Argentina), Korea Electro-Acoustic Music Society’s Annual Conference (Seoul, Korea), Ammerman Center’s Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology, Omaha Under the Radar, Alba Music Festival (Italy), and performed by ensembles such as Crossing Borders, Hub New Music, Talea Ensemble, Transient Canvas, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He currently lives in Houston, Texas, pursuing his doctorate degree in composition at Rice University while composing, teaching, and researching.

 

Sonia Del Hierro (she/her)

Sonia Del Hierro is a PhD Candidate at Rice University. Her project, “Chicana Sartoriality,” analyzes the use of fashion in women of Mexican descents’ lived experiences and identity-construction as it appears throughout 20th and 21st century literature, art, and new media. Her other major project, “Señora Power,” is a collaborative, public-facing effort to highlight and document the journey of Chicana consciousness from 1900-1985 in both Houston and Los Angeles. This project is funded by the U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Center’s Grants-in-Aid and the Mellon Foundation. She also has a forthcoming publication in PMLA that is a collaborative essay on graduate student life and surviving academic with radical collegiality and joy.

 

Ella Gonzalez (she/her)

Ella Gonzalez is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on women and gender in ancient Greek art. Her dissertation project looks at caryatids on bronze mirror handles and public architecture in the ancient Greek-speaking Mediterranean through a feminist lens. She has a forthcoming edited volume (co-edited with Professors Cynthia Colburn and Ellen Caldwell) under contract with Penn State Press (2024) titled Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer: An Intervention, which looks at gender violence in art history globally from antiquity to the present.

 

Victoria S. Kenyon (she/they)

Victoria S. Kenyon is a Curatorial Track Ph.D. student in Art History at the University of Delaware, specializing in nineteenth to early-twentieth century American photography and material culture. Her research focuses in part on the intersections of magic and science in art of that period, how developments in color photography reveal changes in American culture, and on hidden knowledge and esoteric ways of knowing and interacting with the material world. Her project for this conference also integrates her interest in technical art history and historical practices of making alongside more traditional forms of text-based research.

 

Asli Kinsizer (she/her)

Asli Kinsizer is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art Education at UNT, an artist, and educator from Turkey who is pursuing her academic career in the United States. Kinsizer is currently working on her research and proposal “Deconstructing the Orientalist Male Gaze Fantasy of ‘Harem, Hammam and Odalisque’ through Feminist Intersectionality and Visual analysis”, focusing on the conceptual framework of Orientalist depictions of Ottoman females in the Harem, Hammam and odalisque; the development of geographical segregation into the Orientalist paradigm and the formation of stereotypes in visual culture and the arts. Even today representations of Turkish women’s positionally and identity remain problematic under both the Eurocentric and Eastern patriarchal paradigms. She is currently a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas. She teaches Honors Art Appreciation and Computer Art Education for the College of Visual Arts and Design. As a practicing artist, Kinsizer has an ongoing exhibition series called “Strong Women” with which she aims to encourage youth in order to express their uniquely own voices through art; by showcasing various historically significant female heroes.

 

Caroline Koch (she/her)

Caroline Koch is an MA student at The Pennsylvania State University, and specializes in late 19th/early 20th century American and European art, Early Cycladic figurines, and materiality. She is passionate about museum work, and aims to promote accessibility and a sense of community through curation and programming. Upon completing her degree this spring, she hopes to continue her work in the museum industry; throughout her MA studies, she has worked at the Palmer Museum of Art. Originally from Atlanta, she earned her BA at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, majoring in history and art history with concentrations in public history and museum studies, respectively.

 

Daisuke Murata (he/him)

Daisuke Murata is a Ph.D. candidate at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas. His area of focus is modern and contemporary Japanese visual arts. Before joining the Ph.D. program, he worked for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa and Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. Curated exhibitions include Hiroshi Sugimoto—History of History (2008) and Kyosai Kawanabe (2019). He is also the Japanese translator for Claire Bishop’s Radical Museology, 2013 (Tokyo: Getsuyo-sha, 2020). Currently, he is working on his dissertation on Japanese artist Kishimoto Sayako’s (1939–1988) art of social reform.

 

Shen Qu (she/her)

Shen Qu is a first-year art history Ph.D. Student at the School of Art, ASU. She earned her M.A. degree in history of art and archeology at IFA, NYU. Her research interests are the post-war contemporary art market, feminist art history, and East Asian art. With a focus on materiality, she is developing an undergrad course dedicated to craftsmanship in East Asia based on her past working experiences in cultural heritage residency programs in China. Her current published writing focuses on art criticism and covers public art, curation, and museum studies.

 

Kathleen Quaintance (they/them)

Kathleen Quaintance is a historian of modern(ist) visual culture, a teacher, and a craftsperson, and is currently a PhD student at Yale in the department of History of Art. They write about feminist and queer theory as well as twentieth-century conversations between the often fluid spheres of art, craft, and design. Kathleen is especially passionate about embodied methodologies in the field, and they love incorporating material literacy experiences into their teaching and research. Kathleen completed a master’s in WGSS at the University of Oxford, and they have also worked as a printmaking studio technician, a craft teacher, a poster designer, a cheesemonger, an assistant curator, and a museum educator.

 

Sophie Richard (she/her)

Sophie is a current PhD student at The Ohio State University pursuing themes of women, activism, and autonomy in visual culture during the long nineteenth century in America. With interests in Midwestern Studies, transnational influences, and cultural history, Sophie looks to expand notions of the traditional artist and fine art production. Before coming to OSU, Sophie received her BA in Art History and Archaeology from Smith College, and has previous research and internship experiences at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, and the Toledo Museum of Art.

 

Tianyi Zhang (she/her)

Tianyi Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Art History department at Arizona State University with a concentration in modern Chinese art. She graduated from University College London in the Art History MA program in 2018, and the East Asia Language and Civilization department at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. Her main research focus is on uncovering the lost voices of female artists in 20th century wartime China. She is also interested in gender relations as represented in various artworks throughout Chinese history. She seeks to reveal the neglected and underappreciated accomplishments of women artists in China and beyond.