Dr. Elissa Auther
Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory
Visual and Performing Arts Department

Degrees:
Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park, 2000

Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, 1996

B.A. History of Art, San Francisco State University, 1991

Selected Fellowships and Awards:
2004-2005 J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the History of Art
Spring 2002 Smithsonian Institution Research Fellowship, The Renwick Gallery,
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
1998-1999 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship, Smithsonian American
     Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Summer 1998 Luce Foundation Dissertation Research Grant
Summer 1994 Maverick Scholar Grant, Attingham Program in the Decorative Arts, London
1991 Phi Beta Kappa
1990 Younger Scholars’ Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities

Brief Biography:
My areas of expertise in the history of art include American and European art after 1970, feminist art and theory, and film and the avant-garde. My book manuscript, The Material Boundaries of Modernism, focuses on the broad utilization of fiber in American art in the 1960s and 1970s and the changing hierarchical relationship between art and craft expressed by the medium’s new visibility. This study was supported by a J. Paul Getty Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Art and Humanities in 2004-5. I have also written about and published on the criticism of Clement Greenberg and the history of the decorative, the use of yarn and other types of fiber in feminist anti-war activism, artist-produced wallpapers, and the contemporary film installations of Isaac Julien. I am the co-editor of the April 2007 special issue on feminist activist art for the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, and the director of Feminism & Co., a think tank devoted to producing innovative public programming about feminist art and culture housed within the contemporary art institute, The Lab at Belmar in Denver, CO. Currently, I am co-curating with Adam Lerner an exhibition on authenticity and the handmade in American countercultural communities from Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti to Southern Colorado’s infamous Drop City. My second book project examines the copy or replica in the work of a select group contemporary artists who have remade works of art from the 1960s and 1970s.

Presently, I teach the following courses in the Visual and Performing Arts Department.

Lower Division:
Art Matters: Reading, Writing and Research in Art History
Survey of Modern Art I
Survey of Modern Art II

Upper Division:
Women, Art and Culture II
Art After 1945
Contemporary Art
Contemporary Art Theory
Women in Independent Film, Video and Digital Media
Film and the Avant-Garde
Topics in Art History (such as, Readings on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Art History)
Senior Seminar in the Practice of Art History

Courses I will be offering in the future:
Topics in American Art
New Research in Feminist Theory and the History of Art
Material Matters: the History of Fiber in Art from a Global Perspective
Intermediality and the Arts in the 1960s and 70s
History of Performance Art

Helpful Links for Students in My Courses

Lower Division

Art History Resources on the Web

Mother of All Art History Links Pages

Museum of Modern Art

Click on Exhibitions Schedule, then Online Projects. See Les Demoiselles d’Avignon project and the Artists of Die Brücke project. Also see, What is a Print?

Upper Division

Voice of the Shuttle

Theory.org

Postmodern Thought

n.paradoxa

Feminist Theory on the Web

PBS Art21

John Cage Homepage

DIA Chelsea

The NAMES Aids Quilt

The Varo Registry

The Guerilla Girls

Donald Judd’s Marfa Compound

Documenta

Art in Context

Contemporary African Artists

Links to Film Theory Sites