Area of Specialization
Premodern and Early Modern Italian Art
Biography
As a Teaching Assistant Professor and the Lead Undergraduate Advisor for the History of Art and Architecture Department, I am dedicated to teaching and guiding undergraduate students during their time at Pitt. I draw on my graduate training in both art history and clinical psychology in a holistic approach to mentorship that considers the entirety of a student’s life and goals while in college and facilitates student-driven agency in their higher education career. As one of the university’s “Mental Health Champions,” I prioritize student mental health and wellbeing. Being a first-generation college student, I know how complex and stressful navigating coursework and schedule-planning can be, and I strive to alleviate student concerns while charting the best path forward for each individual student. For one-on-one advising, I work directly with History of Art and Architecture and Museum Studies majors. My colleagues, Jennifer Donnelly and Gabe Nolle conduct one-on-one advising meetings with our Architecture Studies students, but I welcome all HAA majors and minors to email me or stop by my office.
As a teacher, I focus on global narratives and histories that challenge teleological and canonical surveys and allow students to develop agency and ownership in their own education. My specialties range from Ancient to Modern, and my favorite areas are Medieval through Baroque. I prioritize thematic approaches and highlighting multiple regions and creators when designing courses. My goal is to introduce students to a wide variety of artworks and artmakers in every course, so each student can find what interests them. I am confident even non-majors can find something that sparks curiosity and intrigue in art history courses!
My research interests focus on early modern Italian art and theology, and I am particularly fascinated by art and artists from Lombardy, the Veneto, and the Marche regions of Italy. My most recent research examines fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings and religious discourse to reveal how pictures were mobilized to both formulate and oppose certain religious out-groups. In my dissertation, "Painting and Persecution: Anti-Jewish and Anti-Protestant Visual Rhetoric in Northern Italy, 1475-1550," I traced the ways in which anti-Jewish imagery transformed to include the new Reformation heretic throughout the Alpine region of Italy. Here, I demonstrated how a series of choices that artists and their patrons made developed art in support of the Catholic Church and formulated local communal identity and belief systems regarding religious others. In the past, I have focused on works in and around Florence, such as the Brancacci Chapel. At the heart of all my research is the interconnectivity of image, text, and theology, and how people invent visual evidence to justify their beliefs.
Education Details
PhD, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
MA, Art History, Kent State University
BA, Art History, Mary Baldwin College
MA, Clinical Psychology, East Carolina University
BA, Psychology and Sociology, Concord University
Selected Publications
Book Review: Andrew R. Casper. An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy. (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021). The Sixteenth Century Journal, forthcoming 2023.
Book Review: Robert Brennan. Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy. (Brepols, 2019). Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture, forthcoming 2023.
Catalog Entry: Follower of Fra Angelico, Nativity, c. 1423-1426. Clowes Fund Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN. (May 2022).
Catalog Entry: Bicci di Lorenzo, Scene from the Legend of St. Nicholas, c. 1400-1410. Clowes Fund Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN. (May 2022).
Book Review: Sandra Cardarelli and Laura Fenelli, eds. Saints, Miracles and the Image: Healing Saints and Miraculous Images in the Renaissance (Brepols, 2017). Contemporaneity 8 (2019). https://doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2019.290