Department of Art History

The Department of Art History is excited to welcome Catherine Popovici as the new Burke Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. 

Catherine H. Popovici specializes in the visual culture of the Indigenous Americas, with a specific focus on the intersection of landscapes and sculpture in the Maya regions of Mesoamerica.

Her first book manuscript, “Variable Atmospheres: The Stelae of the Copán Valley, Honduras,” focus on a unique sculptural suite created in 652 CE and installed along mountain ridges surrounding the ancient Maya city of Copán in western Honduras. This project argues, through object-oriented and place-based research, that the Maya mobilized features of the environment and the climactic atmosphere to amplify and transform the meaning of monumental stone sculptures. “Variable Atmospheres” is currently supported by the ACLS H. and T. King Fellowship in Ancient American Art and Culture and participates in conversations across art history, anthropology, and the environmental humanities. Popovici’s broader research focuses on the depictions of movement, materiality, and the historiography of Maya visual culture.

Her work has previously been supported by positions at Johns Hopkins University, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Blanton Museum of Art. Popovici earned a PhD in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin, a MA in Art History from Penn State, and a BA with High Honors in the History of Art from Smith College.