Graduate Studies
From the Director of Graduate Studies Nancy Locke
The year 2024 was a great year for graduate students, with several receiving important external fellowships. Ph.D. candidate Kyle Marini received a residential fellowship from the McNeil Center for American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for fall 2024. He also received the Marilynn Thoma Predoctoral Fellowship to advance research and writing of his dissertation, which reconstructs the production and viewer experience of the textile sculpture-portrait of Huascar, one of the last Inca sovereigns. Kyle furthermore received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for dissertation research in Peru and Spain.
Ph.D. candidate Holli Turner was selected to participate in the Center for Curatorial Leadership’s Seminar in Curatorial Practice. As one of just fifteen doctoral students chosen through a highly competitive process, Holli joined her cohort in New York for two weeks in July. Holli also received a grant from the Delmas Foundation to conduct research in Venice for her dissertation on Titian’s paintings for the Spanish emperor.
Amy Orner, also a Ph.D. candidate, received a Junior Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, which supported three months of research in Scotland in connection with her dissertation on the development of Edinburgh’s New Town.
Congratulations as well to graduate students who received grants related to work they are doing at the institutional level. Ph.D. candidate Keri Mongelluzzo, along with Palmer Museum of Art colleagues Brandi Breslin and Rebecca Simpson, were co-recipients of an Art Bridges Learning and Engagement Grant to support programming on civic engagement at the museum.
The past year witnessed a strong showing by graduate students at national conferences. Ph.D. candidate Olivia Crawford presented “Wedding Witness: Orientalist Fantasy and Colonial Realism in Delacroix’s Jewish Wedding in Morocco” at the Southeastern College Art Conference in Richmond, VA, October 13, 2023. Amy Orner gave the paper “‘An Enemy, An Adversary!’ Esther as a Representation of Venetian Identity and Ottoman Conflict” at the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference in October 2023. Ph.D. candidate Emily Hagen presented “Digging Up the Past: Architecture and Rediscovered Relics in Post-Tridentine Rome” at the conference “Afterlives: Reinvention, Reception, and Reproduction,” Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, California State University Long Beach, November 4, 2023. Ph.D. student Noah Dasinger gave the paper “What Was He Trying to Tell Us? Donatello’s Signatures in Context” at a symposium in honor of the retirement of Shelley Zuraw, an associate professor at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, November 10, 2023.Kyle Marini presented “Sling Braiding as a Masculine Ideal in the Late Horizon Andes (ca. 1400–1534)” on February 15, 2024, at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Chicago.M.A. student Annalise Palmer presented her paper, “Remote Control in Deborah Hay’s Solo,” at the 28th Annual Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art at the Barnes Foundation, March 1, 2024, in Philadelphia. She was introduced by her advisor, Professor Sarah Rich.Art History and Asian Studies dual-title Ph.D. candidate Han Chen presented “Negotiating the Global Knowledge of China through Art Trade, 1900–1950,” at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, March 12–16, in Seattle. The Association for Asian Studies also awarded Han a travel grant to participate in its Dissertation Prospectus Workshop, “Global China,” prior to the conference.Ph.D. candidate Kenta Tokushige presented “Cosimo or Francesco: Questions on Patronage and Politics Surrounding Terra del Sole” at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Chicago, March 20–24, 2024. Kyle Marini also presented at RSA, giving a paper titled “Inca Sling Braiding as an Imperial Tightrope, c. 1450–1534.”Arielle Fields, Ph.D. candidate, presented “It’s Very Middle Class: The Visual Culture of Nurseries in Britain, 1880–1900” at the 21st Annual Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art/Dahesh Museum of Art Graduate Symposium in Nineteenth-Century Art, March 16–17, 2024.
During the year, scholarly events at Penn State also presented opportunities for our graduate students to share their research. In September of 2024, our department held its annual graduate student symposium, and we heard papers by Ph.D. candidates Amy Orner and Clio Rom, and M.A. student Morning Glory Ritchie. Noah Dasinger and M.A. student Alex Coberly presented in the CEMMS Graduate Student Roundtable on April 9, 2024, and Amy Orner co-organized the panel. To finish out the academic year, graduating master's students shared their experiences with research and thesis writing on April 26. Faculty, students, and guests heard presentations by Triana Cancel, Alex Coberly, Annalise Palmer, Ariana Ramirez, and Grace Tran. This fall, the department began holding monthly afternoon teas for the first time since the pandemic. Organized by M.A. student Nathan Manna, they provide opportunities for members of the department to present their research in an informal setting.
Philanthropy in action: Empowering the new generation of art historians
Kate McCowan was a recipient of the Department of Art History’s Jerilea Zempel Award in 2024. She used these funds to spend the summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working as a curatorial and exhibitions intern for the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, in partnership with the Sealaska Heritage Institute. While at MoCNA, Kate assisted with exhibition installations and de-installations, artwork condition reporting, curatorial research, and visitor resource development. During this time, Kate was able to spend a week conducting research for her M.A. thesis on Indigenous performance art in the Institute of American Indian Arts archives, where the late James Luna’s papers are housed. Outside of her internship, Kate pursued personal interests in the Puebloan region, making site visits to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, significant Ancestral Puebloan sites across New Mexico and Utah, and living Pueblos within New Mexico. Kate’s summer ended with a trip to her own family’s Pueblo, Ysleta del Sur, in El Paso, Texas.