Graduate Students
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
Agnik Bhattacharya
M.A., History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India
B.A., Ancient Indian and World History, Culture and Archaeology, Sanskrit College, University of Calcutta, IndiaAdvisor: Matthew Canepa
Research interests: the archaeological, social and political histories of pre- Islamic eastern Iranian world and Central Asia
Brandon Blackburn
B.A., English Literature, Colby College
Dan Bustillo
M.F.A., Art and Technology, Integrated Media, California Institute of the Arts
M.A., University of California, Irvine
B.A., Art, Hunter College City of New YorkAdvisors: Bliss Cua Lim and Lucas Hilderbrand
Research Interests: Queer and trans of color theory, feminist theory, activist media, queer latinx studies, security studies, surveillance studies, carceral studies
Samantha Carter
M.A., New Media and Digital Cultures, University of Amsterdam
B.A., Modern Culture and Media, Brown UniversityAdvisors: Bambi Haggins and Allison Perlman
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.
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 UniversityAdvisor: Bert Winther-Tamaki
Research interests: Japanese art, material/visual culture, and performance traditions; Architecture and shaped space of all kinds; Video games and Play Studies; Contemporary Reception of art historical ideas and forms (i.e. semiotics, kitsch, reproductions and virtual re-presentations); Humanities/Art History Pedagogy
Kylie Ching
M.A. Art History, University of California, Irvine
B.A., Art History and English, University of California, IrvineAdvisors: Cécile Whiting and Bert Winther-Tamaki
Research Interests: Research interests: Asian American and Asian diasporic visual cultures, contemporary American art history, feminist and queer theory, cultural memory, and history of photography
Marianna Davison
M.A., Visual Culture, Illinois State University
B.A., Art History, University of Texas at AustinAdvisor: James Nisbet
Research Interests: Modern and contemporary American art history and visual culture, the history of photography, museum studies, critical environmental studies, landscape reclamation, indigenous sovereignty and activism, socially engaged collaboration and artist collectives.
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, ItalyAdvisor: Mathew Canepa
Research Interest: Achaemenid Art and Archaeology, Hellenistic Art and Archaeology, Museum Studies, Communication of the Cultural Heritage.
Kelly Donahey
M.F.A., Art, University of California, Irvine, M.A., University of California, Irvine
B.F.A., Photography, San Francisco Art InstituteAdvisor: Catherine Liu
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: http://www.kellydonahey.com/
Tariq Elijah Edwards
B.A., Mass Communications,Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC
Research Interests: Research Interests: Black feminist theory and thought, critical race theory
Kathie Foley-Meyer
M.F.A. in Creative Writing, School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts, M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine
B.S. in Foreign Service, Georgetown UniversityAdvisor: Bridget Cooks
Research Interests: Issues in contemporary Black visual culture, representations of Blackness in early modern art, the relationship between Blackness and the ocean.
Website: http://www.kf-m.com/
Sarah Fugfugosh-Munoz
M.A., California State University, Los Angeles
B.A., Art History, California State University, Los AngelesAdvisor: Lyle Massey
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.
Anthony Graham
M.S., Critical, Curatorial, Conceptual, Columbia University, New York
B.A., Architecture, University of San Diego, CaliforniaResearch Interests: contemporary art, architecture, and public space; abstraction, materiality, and embodiment; critical theory and decolonial studies
Eric Hahn
M.A., New York University
B.A., Purchase College State University of New YorkAdvisor: Peter Krapp
Research Interests: Media Archaeology, Media Policy & Law, Critical Infrastructure Studies, Digital Preservation, Emotion & Affect, Body Genres.
Ari Hakkarainen
M.A., History and Criticism of Art, Florida State University
B.A., History and Criticism of Art, Florida State UniversityAdvisor: Roland Betancourt
Research Interests: Byzantine art and architecture; the modernist engagement with Byzantium; Queer identity, queer theory, and queer studies; Ideas of the historical past, contemporaneity, and futurity; Queer medievalisms; the history of photography; art and LGBTQ activism
Robert Hayden III
B.A., (summa cum laude with honors) Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
Advisor: James Nisbet
Research Interests: Modern art of the Americas and Europe, focusing on geometric abstraction and the monochrome; postmodern American art; post-WWII visual art in Los Angeles; the John McLaughlin catalogue raisonné.
Asako Katsura
M.A., (with distinction) Japanese Studies, Sophia University, Japan
B.A., Art History, International Christian University, JapanAdvisor: Bert Winther-Tamaki
Research Interests: 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.
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 MānoaAdvisor: James Nisbet
Dissertation: "We Only Want the Land: Groundings of Revolutionary Ecological Art"
Research interests: contemporary art, documentary photography, Third Cinema, land art, environmental humanities, climate change, political ecology, cultural geography, global studies, social movements, decolonization, settler colonial studies
Website: https://aaronkatzeman.com
Justin Keever
M.A., Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine
B.A. (with highest honors & highest distinction) Communications/New Media Theory, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Production, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillAdvisor: Braxton Soderman
Research Interests: New Media, Game Studies, Critical Theory, Neoliberal Subjectivity, Structural Marxism, Ideology, Animality, Glitch Aesthetics, Embodiment, Materialism, Agency
Zachary Korol-Gold
B.A., Visual Art, Brown University
Advisor: James Nisbet
Research Interest: Ecological art, contemporary art, alternative agriculture, ecocriticism, political ecology
Nastasya Kosygina
B.A., University of Minnesota-Twin CitiesAdvisor: Mathew Canepa
Research Interest: 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.
Kien Minh Le
M.A., Film Studies, Ohio University
B.A., (with distinction), Digital Media Studies, Juniata CollegeAdvisor: Lucas Hilderbrand
Research Interests: film theory & history, phenomenology, queer theory, cultural studies, postcolonialism
Edward Charles Mendez
M.A. Public Engagement - University of Nevada, Reno
B.A. English (Writing Specialization) - University of Nevada, RenoAdvisor: Bambi Haggins
Research Interests: Anti-Blackness and American visual culture; race, film, and television; political economy, cultural studies, critical theory. Edward is also co-editor of the film section for The Brooklyn Rail.
Quyên Nguyen-Le
B.A. Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Politics and Law, University of Southern California
Advisor: Lucas Hilderbrand
Research Interests: critical refugee studies, queer and trans of color feminisms, artistic praxis, transnational cinema, transformative justice
Website, https://www.quyennl.com/
Ryan-Rose Nowak-Crawford
B.A., Art, University of Southern California
Advisor: Bo Ruberg
Research Interests: Queerness, video games, horror and monstrosity, de-colonization, anti-capitalism.
Akane Okoshi
B.A., Fordham University Lincoln Center
M.A., New York UniversityAdvisor: Bridget Cooks
Research Interests: Museum criticism, visual culture and critical race spectatorship, public humanities, gender and feminist studies, history of photography, critical archival studies, provenance research, material history, settler colonialism.
Raphael Rosalen
M.A., University of Southern California, Cinema and Media Studies
B.A., University of Southern California, Cinema and Media StudiesResearch Interest: Digital media, popular media, celebrity studies, internet studies, digital humanities, gender studies.
Luis Eduardo Serna
M.A. Art and Ecologism, Universidad de Colombia, Colombia, South America
B.A., Fine Arts, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia, South AmericaAdvisors: Glen Mimura and Allison Perlman
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.
Sara Sisun
M.F.A., Painting, The San Francisco Art Institute
M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder
B.A., Art Practice, Stanford UniversityAdvisor: Lyle Massey
Research Interests: Early Modern art and corporeality, critical theory, medical humanities, history of science, posthumanism
http://www.sarasisun.net/
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 UniversityAdvisor: Cécile Whiting
Research Interests: History of photography, photojournalism, and documentary; American art and visual culture; new media and digital rendering.
Website: https://mkthrailkill.com/
Bryan Truitt
B.A., Art Practice and Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley
Advisor: Aaron Trammell
Research Interests: digital media, biopolitics, cultural studies, feminist and queer theory, science and technology studies, critical race theory, social and environmental justice.
Website: https://www.bryantruitt.com
Ella Turenne
M.A., Media Studies, The New School
B.A., Psychology (Studio Art, Theatre Art Minors), Stony Brook UniversityIt is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Ella Turenne passed away on Christmas Day.
Ella was a leader in our community. At UC Irvine, she brought tremendous joy and knowledge. She inspired us to conceive of the arts as a form of social justice and resistance. As a doctoral student in Visual Studies, whose adviser was Dr. Bambi Haggins, her research focused on Black feminist theory and visual culture. An experienced instructor, she was a much beloved TA in the FMS 85 series and won the Outstanding TA Award of 2021. She was remarkably active in our graduate program and on our campus, organizing a screening and discussion of “Madan Sara,” creating alliances with the Prison Arts Collective, co-organizing and hosting the VS Graduate Conference of 2021 “Resistance in (a)Synchronous Futures,” connecting storytellers with entrepreneurship through the Beall Applied Innovation, and so much more.
Ella was an outstanding artist, activist, scholar, actor, television host, filmmaker, journalist, poet, author, and curator who championed freedom, justice, and expression. In 2019, The Haitian Roundtable inducted her into the 1804 List Of Haitian-American Changemakers. Her myriad accomplishments can be found at https://www.ellaturenne.com/.
As she wrote in her poem, “Middle Passage,”
The womb that is the middle passage
Still has not healed
Still moans with the voices
Of thousands of vocal chords
United in cries for freedom
An energy that looms over
Even the calmest of waters
That energy rages under my skin
Keeping me connected
Reminding me that there was a before me
And that there is a with me
Even thousands of miles away.
Ella never let us forget all who came before and all who are with her now. Although we write you in sorrow, we are full of gratitude for having known Ella, and all that she gave to our community. Visual Studies with the departments of Art History and Film and Media Studies will be planning a memorial gathering on March 4th, for those who would like to come together to celebrate Ella’s wonderful life.
Scott Volz
M.A., Art History and Criticism, SUNY Stony Brook
B.A., Art History, Kent State UniversityAdvisor: James Nisbet
Dissertation: "Deadly Circularity: Waste and Ecology in Art of the 1970s and 1980s"
Research Interests: Modern and contemporary art, land and environmental art, animal studies, climate change, the Anthropocene, decolonization, discard studies, ecocriticism, ecosocialism, environmental history, environmental justice, historical materialism, new materialism, political ecology, urban biodiversity.
Mallory Elizabeth Wells
B.A., Art History, Occidental CollegeAdvisor: Matthew Canepa
Research Interests: Transcultural exchange and visualities of authority in the late antique Mediterranean, the late antique Near East, and the early European Middle Ages.
KT Wong
B.A., Music and Theater, Lafayette College
Advisor: Bo Ruberg
Research interests: Game studies, ludomusicology, media archaeology, translation studies, transmedia storytelling
Siavash Yansori
M.A, Film & Media Studies, Columbia University
M.F.A, Photography, University of CincinnatiAdvisor: Kristen Hatch
Research Interests: Iranian and Middle Eastern Cinema,
Melodrama, History of Photography, Postcolonialism, Gender, and Queer Studies
Xinyue (Lulu) Yuan
M.A. (with distinction), History of Art and Archeology, University of London
B.A., Liberal Arts, Sun Yat-sen UniversityAdvisor: Roberta Wue
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.
Layah Ziaii-Bigdeli
M.A., Art History Concentration in Cultural Heritage and Preservation, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
B.A., Art History & Archeology, Columbia UniversityAdvisor: Matthew P. Canepa
Research Interests: Sasanian Art and Archaeology, Islamic Art and Archaeology, Persian Language and Literature, Numismatics, Museum studies, Cultural Heritage, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Website:http://uci.academia.edu/LayahZiaiiBigdeli