Graduate Students

Simin Amini

M.A. Art History.  Alzahra University. Tehran, Iran
M.A. Near and Middle Eastern Studies. SOAS University of London.

B.A. Fashion and textile design. Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

Research interests: Ancient Iran Art and Archaeology, Persian mythology and literature, Zoroastrianism, Islamic Art art and Archaeology, Museum Studies.

Matthew Canepa

simina@uci.edu

B.A., Art History, University of California, Los Angeles

Research Interests: The History of Photography in Iran, The reception of Ancient Iran during 19th and 20th Century, Iran.

Cienna Benn

B.A., Afro-American Studies, Sociology, Howard University

Research Interests: Black visual culture, Africana aesthetics, visuality, social theory, archival studies, history of photography, Black feminist thought, Digital Humanities

Bridget Cooks

ciennab@uci.edu

Agnik Bhattacharya
 

M.A., History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India
B.A., Ancient Indian and World History, Culture and Archaeology, Sanskrit College, University of Calcutta, India

Research interests: the archaeological, social and political histories of pre- Islamic eastern Iranian world and Central Asia

Matthew Canepa

agnikb@uci.edu

Samantha Carter
 

M.A., New Media and Digital Cultures, University of Amsterdam
B.A., Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Research Interests: Experience of marginalized creatives in film & television in the digital era.  She is investigating this topic through what Dawn Mannay calls a researcher-initiated production, recruiting interested artists to collaborate in the development of an experimental television pilot.

Bridget Cooks

sacarte1@uci.edu

Zane Casimir

M.A., Art History, University of Oregon
B.F.A., Sequential Art, Savannah College of Art and Design
B.A. Japanese/Asian Studies, Purdue University

Research Interests: Spaces of Play; Japanese Design-of-Environment; Modern Architecture, Landscape Design, and Sculpted Space; Japanese Art, Material/Visual culture, and Performance Traditions; Video game and Play Studies; Contemporary Reception of Art Historical ideas and forms (i.e. Semiotics, Kitsch, Reproductions and Digital/Virtual Re-presentations).

Bert Winther-Tamaki

zcasimir@uci.edu

Ileana De Giuseppe

M.A. (Summa cum laude) History, Preservation and Enhancement of the Artistic and Archaeological Heritage and Landscape, University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy
B.A. (Summa cum laude) Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy

Research Interest: Achaemenid Art and Archaeology, Hellenistic Art and Archaeology, Museum Studies, Communication of the Cultural Heritage.

Mathew Canepa

idegiuse@uci.edu

M.A. Art Theory, Hongik University, Korea

B.A. German Language and Literature, Art History and Theory, Arts and Cultural Management, Hongik University, Korea

Research Interests: Korean art, modern and contemporary art, digital art, new media theory, computational and generative art, post-colonialism studies, science and technology studies, media art preservation

Gabrielle Jung

Kelly Donahey

M.F.A., Art, University of California, Irvine, M.A., University of California, Irvine
B.F.A., Photography, San Francisco Art Institute

Research Interests: 20th century American media art and the avant-garde; mass culture; labor; the history of American Leftism, photography, art and design pedagogy, and the professional art world; Marxist, pragmatic, cybernetic, postmodern, and aesthetic theory; the conceptualization of nationalism, the public, individualism, and freedom.

Website

Catherine Liu

kdonahey@uci.edu

Sarah Fugfugosh-Munoz

M.A., California State University, Los Angeles
B.A., Art History, California State University, Los Angeles
Research Interests: Early modern art, visual culture, gender studies in Italy and France: 16th and 17th century female artistic production, developments in genre painting, particularly still-life painting concurrent with scientific views, food studies-nutrition, health, history of consumption, relationship between early modern scientific gaze, natural philosophy, botanical illustration, garden and landscape history and horticultural practice.

Lyle Massey

sfugfugo@uci.edu

Anthony Graham

M.S., Critical, Curatorial, Conceptual, Columbia University, New York
B.A., Architecture, University of San Diego, California

Research Interests: contemporary art, materiality, and embodiment.

Bridget Cooks

grahama2@uci.edu

Talia Gordon

B.A., Art History, University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests: Medieval period

Roland Betancourt

taliaag@uci.edu

Asako Katsura

M.A., (with distinction) Japanese Studies, Sophia University, Japan
B.A., Art History, International Christian University, Japan

Research Interests: Modern and contemporary Japanese art, conceptual photography in Japan and California between the 1950s and 1970s, art and visual culture of Japanese countryside before the Asia Pacific War, the culture of eroguro nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) in the 1920s–1930s Japan, memorialization of war trauma in postwar Japan, Asian American art and visual culture.

Bert Winther-Tamaki

katsuraa@uci.edu

Aaron Katzeman

M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine
B.A. (summa cum laude with honors) Art History, certificate in Environmental Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Dissertation: "Aloha ‘Āina as Medium: Land, Art, and Sovereignty in Post-Statehood Hawai‘i"

Research Interests:

Contemporary art and visual culture, documentary media, institutional liberation, radical cinema, anti-colonial Marxism, environmental and climate justice, political ecology, critical agrarian studies

Website

James Nisbet

jkatzema@uci.edu

Zachary Korol Gold

M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine                           

B.A., Visual Art, Brown University

Dissertation:"Reconfiguring Nature, Technology, and Sense: Pierre Huyghe's Situated Artworks"

Research Interests: Contemporary art, ecology, ecocriticism, alternative agriculture, land and environmental art, phenomenology

James Nisbet

zkorolgo@uci.edu

Nastasya Kosygina

M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine                                    

B.A., University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Research Interests: Archaeology and material culture of the late antique eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, human relationships to materiality and their effect upon the material debris of praxis, etic and emic concepts of "magic" vs premodern landscapes of doing, non-luxury material culture and human intentionality, the unintelligible word and the non-legible inscription, Greek and Syriac epigraphy and paleography.

Mathew Canepa

nkosygin@uci.edu

Bermet Nishanova

M.S. in Art Conservation, Institute of Fine Arts NYU, M.A., Art History, University of Chicago

BA/ BS University of Georgia.

Research interest: Islamic arts and architecture of Central Asia, Islamic textiles, Persian language and literature.

Alka Patel and Matthew Canepa

bnishano@uci.edu

Lee Purvey

B.A., Anthropology, Grinnell College

Research Interests: Modernist art movements in mid-20th century Mexican architecture and monumental arts and its intersection with broader social, political, and historical topics.

Abigail Lapin Dardashti

lpurvey@uci.edu

Luis Eduardo Serna

M.A., Art and Ecologism, Universidad de Colombia, Colombia, South America
B.A., Fine Arts, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia, South America

Research Interests: Contemporary artistic practices focused on social justice processes, the Colombian peace process, narratives and representations of victims in the armed conflict in Colombia, representation of otherness, controversy mapping as a way to expand disciplined forms of analysis.

Glen Mimura and Allison Perlman

leserna@uci.edu

Molly Katharine Thrailkill

M.A. (with distinction), History of Art, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
B.A., Art & Art History and French, Colgate University

Research Interests: History of photography: photojournalism, documentary, digital rendering, and new media. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American art and visual culture; particularly the landscape of the American West, forestry and logging, tourism, and the Big Trees.

Website

Cécile Whiting

mthrailk@uci.edu

Bryan Truitt

M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine

B.A., Art Practice and Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley

Research Interests: digital media, biopolitics, cultural studies, feminist and queer theory, science and technology studies, critical race theory, social and environmental justice.

Website

Aaron Trammell

btruitt1@uci.edu

Jianda(Dada) Wang

M.A., Art History, University of California, Davis
B.A., Art History, Critical Theory, Macalester College, MN

Research Interests: Modern and contemporary Chinese art, Asian American art, performance and affect, abstraction and Illegibility.

Roberta Wue

jiandaw@uci.edu

Mallory Elizabeth Wells

M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine

B.A., Art History, Occidental College

Research Interests: Transcultural exchange and visualities of authority in the late antique Mediterranean, the late antique Near East, and the early European Middle Ages.

Matthew Canepa

mallorew@uci.edu

Siavash Yansori

M.A, Film&Media Studies, Columbia University
M.F.A, Photography, University of Cincinnati

Research Interests: Iranian and Middle Eastern Cinema, Melodrama, History of Photography, Postcolonialism, Gender, and Queer Studies.

Kristen Hatch

syansori@uci.edu

Elliot Yu

B.A., University of California, Los Angeles

Xinyue (Lulu) Yuan

M.A. (with distinction), History of Art and Archeology, University of London
B.A., Liberal Arts, Sun Yat-sen University

Dissertation: "Ambient Paper: Wartime Migration and Modern Chinese Artists' Books, 1932-1948"

Research Interests: Modern Chinese Art and Visual Culture in a Global Context, Transnationalism, Mobility Studies, Wartime Modernism, Space, Experience, Art and Media Technologies.

Roberta Wue

xinyuey6@uci.edu

Layah Ziaii-Bigdeli

M.A., Art History Concentration in Cultural Heritage and Preservation, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
B.A., Art History & Archeology, Columbia University

Research Interests: Sasanian Art and Archaeology, Islamic Art and Archaeology, Persian Language and Literature, Numismatics, Museum studies, Cultural Heritage, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Website