Department of Art History

The Department of Art History applauds Erin Dusza, who recently completed her Ph.D. in Art History.
Dr. Dusza described her dissertation as follows:

The title of my dissertation is "Art, Historicism, and Nostalgia in the Creation of Czechoslovak National Identity."

My work traces the development of the national symbols and iconography of 19th-century ideas of the Czech nation. It follows them through the twentieth and even twenty-first centuries as public artworks inform the people about their past and construct an idealized national identity. 

The relief (below) is one example. It features female allegories of the city of Prague and the Vltava River, with views of the city in the distance. The mixed media work was part of an award-winning interior installation at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis to showcase the skills taught at the Prague School of Applied Arts to international audiences.

Thanks to an extended stay in Brno with a Fulbright research grant and then relocating to Bratislava, my research also includes the importance of Moravian and Slovakian traditions in the composition of Czech and Czechoslovak identity.

 

Photo: Stanislav Sucharda (1866 - 1916), Praha a Vltava, 1904, marble and bronze relief.