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.

Alka Patel

Co-advisor: Matthew Canepa

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: Ancient South Asian History, South and Central Asian Archaeology, Ancient Political Thought, History of Ideas, Global Intellectual History, History of Modern South and Central Asia, History of Archaeology and History of Museum Studies

Dissertation: "Political Narratives and Archaeological Investigations: A Global History of Afghan Archaeology in Modern Afghanistan, 1833–1979"

I have been awarded the John F. Richards Afghanistan Fellowship in the year 2023 and 2024.

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

B.A., Art History (Honors), French, Studio Art, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Research Interest: Guy Debord and spectacle, modern and contemporary art history, Marxist theory, and traces of transhistorical encounters (alternate constructions of time and history) that artworks produce.

Talia Gordon

B.A., English, minor in Art History and Global Medieval Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests: Medieval period, materiality of the medieval Eastern Orthodox icon, the icon in cultural transition with particular attention paid to the circulation of religious objects from the Byzantine center into both Italian and Eastern European cultural contexts.

Roland Betancourt

taliaag@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., Classics and Art History & B.S. in Chemistry, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Research Interests: Byzantine studies, subaltern studies, water, infrastructure, premodern Mediterranean, Rome, Constantinople, geology, urban archaeology, material culture, Greek and Syriac paleography, classical and postclassical reception.

Matthew 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

Dissertation: "Entangled Materialities: Medieval Textiles in Central Asia, Iran, and India (9th to 13th Centuries C.E.)”

Research interests:  Textiles, medieval production techniques, scientific analysis, art conservation, medieval Persian literature, and Islamic and South Asian art and architecture.

Alka Patel and Matthew Canepa

bnishano@uci.edu

Lee Purvey

B.A., Anthropology, Grinnell College

Research Interests: Modern architecture in Mexico and the United States; the influence of pre-Columbian monumental architecture and Indigenous vernacular building practices on modern and contemporary architecture; the intersections between the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and architecture; functionalism.

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

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

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

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