As a result of my nearly twenty years of curatorial experience (as Curator of Paintings at the Yale Center for British Art), I like to emphasize in my classes a strong object-related approach which lends itself whenever possible to firsthand study in museums, private collections, or exhibitions. My primary concentration is on British Victorian art, on which I have published extensively on diverse topics such as Pre-Raphaelitism, the iconology of womanhood, male genius, sempstresses, and the Grosvenor Gallery. I equally enjoy teaching and advising in the field of American 19th-century art and often combine an interdisciplinary, Anglo-American perspective. My most recent projects include those on fairy paintings, Victorian history pictures, and images of emigration; I continue my work on the huge subject of Victorian religious painting, a much neglected subject. Among the seminars I have taught are those entitled Representations of the Other in 19th-Century Art: Symbolism and fin-de-siecle art; Death and Dying in Visual Culture; The Body Politic in 19th-century art; Pre-Raphaelitism; The Gilded Age in Europe and America; and Art Museums: Theory, History, and Practice. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Areas of Expertise
American and British painting, 1750-1950
Victorian art
Pre-Raphaelitism, women artists
Constructions of gender, race, and ethnicity
Feminist art and issues
19th-century critical reception

Selected Publications

"Symbolist Debts to Pre-Raphaelitism" in Worldwide Pre-Raphaelitism; "Feminism and Art History: Past Achievement and New Directions" in Looking Forward, Looking Back: A Reader in Women’s Studies

"Painted Fictions: Commemorating the Everyday in Victorian Art" in Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters in the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

"Winged Fantasies: Innocence, Sexuality, and Nudity in Victorian Fairy
Painting" in Between Rousseau and Freud: Visual Representations of Children and the Construction of Childhood in the 19^th Century

The Defining Moment: Victorian Narrative Painting

"Post-Raphaelite Visions: A Strangely Disordered Gaze" in Collecting the Pre-Raphaelites: The Anglo-American Enchantment

"The Unsettled Hearth: The Problematics of Women and Victorian Interiors” in Re-Framing the Pre-Raphaelites

The Grosvenor Gallery: A Palace of Art in Victorian England (w/ C. Denney)

English Pre-Raphaelitism and its European Context (w/ Alicia Faxon)

James Smetham: Artist, Author, Pre-Raphaelite Associate

A Struggle for Fame: Victorian Women Artists and Authors (w/ L. Peterson)

"Stereotyping Creativity: The Cult of Male Genius in Victorian Art" in Rewriting the Victorians

English Pre-Raphaelitism and its Reception in American in the 19^th Century

Richard Redgrave (w/ Ronald Parkinson)

Images of Victorian Womanhood in English Art