Emerging Scholars Symposium Highlights Research by Graduate Students

The Emerging Scholars Symposium, held every other year at the museum since 2014, highlights research by graduate students and emerging art history scholars while spotlighting major exhibitions at the Georgia Museum of Art. Each symposium has expanded on its corresponding exhibition’s theme, fostering new perspectives in art history.

● 2014: “Art Interrupted” – Explored diplomacy in visual and material culture
● 2016: “Icon of Modernism” – Examined portrayals of the Brooklyn Bridge and American modernity
● 2019: “Life, Love, and Marriage Chests” – Focused on Renaissance Italian art
● 2021: “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” – Addressed themes of art and identity
● 2023: “Object Lessons in American Art” – Reconsidered Euro-American, Native American and African American artistic narratives

Presented alongside the traveling exhibition “Beyond the Medici: The Haukohl Family Collection” (on view through May 18), this year’s symposium, “Beyond the Center: Art Histories from the Periphery,” explores art styles and movements from perspectives beyond well-established timelines and geographies. As the field of art history develops, scholarly investigation is shifting focus from the traditional cities and civilizations associated with a particular movement. Both the symposium and exhibition promote exploring these new paths. Just as the exhibition highlights a localized body of baroque art from outside the dominant narrative, the symposium invites scholars to rethink conventional frameworks of style, period and place.

The Emerging Scholars Symposium is a collaborative effort with UGA’s Association of Graduate Art Students (AGAS) at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Drawing inspiration from a concurrent exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, the topic of each symposium expands on the theme of the highlighted exhibition, presenting a variety of perspectives and research subjects related to a shared concept.

The symposium is one way the museum collaborates with students and faculty at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. It provides a great opportunity for UGA art history graduate students to gain valuable experience in organizing an international scholarly symposium. With guidance from faculty and museum staff, AGAS students select the theme, draft the call for papers, review submissions and coordinate the schedule, meaning that they have an opportunity to network, gain professional skills and share their research.

Registration for the symposium is not required, and both the keynote lecture and the Saturday sessions are free and open to the public.

Schedule 

Thursday, February 20

5 p.m. Refreshments in lobby

5:30 p.m. Keynote Lecture: “Taste, Discipline, and Research: How the Baroque Florentine Style Came to Be,” Dr. Sheila Barker, University of Pennsylvania

Friday, February 21
Graduate Student Sessions

9 a.m. Coffee

9:30 a.m. Welcome and Opening Remarks: Isabela Doulatshahi, president, Association of Graduate Art Students

9:40 a.m. Session 1: The Baroque: European and Colonial Peripheries

• “Forbidden Virtue: Female Suicide as the Ultimate Moral Achievement,” Grace Burns, master’s candidate, University of Georgia

• “A Warrior’s Armor: Dressing Judith in the Italian Renaissance,” Isabela Doulatshahi, master’s candidate, University of Georgia

• “Forging Identity Through Devotion: Colonial Impacts and Religious Devotion in Exvoto de la Sagrada Familia by José Campeche,” Marisol Rodriguez Berdasco, master’s candidate, University of South Florida

10:35 a.m. Break

10:45 a.m. Session 2: America’s Peripheral Identities and Histories

• “Tiffany and the West,” Morgan Ross, master’s candidate, University of Oklahoma

• “Reclaiming the Wilderness: Ecofeminist Perspectives in the Works of 19th-Century Female Artists,” Meagan Whalen, master’s candidate, California State University Long Beach

11:40 a.m. – 1 p.m. Lunch Break
(Catered lunch by invitation only)

1 p.m. Session 3: Transnational and Transcultural Perspectives

• “Synagogues across the Sea: Social Ideologies Manifested Structurally in the Indian Ocean Jewish Diaspora,” Milo Pilgrim, doctoral candidate, University of Texas at Austin

• “Alfred Liyolo and State Spectacle: To Be Authentic and Modern in the Postcolonial Regime of Zaire,” Juul Van Haver, doctoral candidate, Columbia University

• “On the Peripheries of the Cold War. Art Exchange between the German Democratic Republic and Nicaragua,” Anna Nolte, pre-doctoral fellow, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

1:55 p.m. Break

2:05 p.m. Session 4: Transformative Art

• “Conceptual Threads: Tina Girouard and Antoine Oleyant’s Drapo Vodou,” Liam Maher, doctoral candidate, Temple University

• “The Immediate, the Iterative, and the Infinite: Ching Ho Cheng’s Alchemical works,” Christina Shen, master’s candidate, New York University

2:45 p.m. Closing Remarks: Isabela Doulatshahi