Our faculty is known for exemplary research and teaching. They encourage work that investigates how art and material culture engage the social world and give form to human imagination.
Approaches to the field involve understanding works of art within their historical contexts, and being able to respond creatively to the aesthetic, social, political, and psychological issues they suggest. Because forms of visual communication are important to all cultures, art historians work to carefully trace and place their significance on many levels of understanding. They also learn to work as curators—collecting, preserving, and coordinating objects in order to shape larger stories about humanity.
Doctoral student MaryClaire Pappas has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Sweden for the 2019-2020 academic year. Pappas was also awarded the 2019-2020 Einar and Eva Lund Haugen Memorial Scholarship at the recent Society for Advancement of Scandinavian Studies Annual Conference.
Art Historian Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz studies the rich visual culture of the ancient Kongo kingdom, uncovering beauty, resiliency, and identity. Dr. Martínez-Ruiz is an expert on African and Caribbean artistic, visual, and religious practices. He is the inaugural holder of the Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of the late IU art historian and scholar of African art, Roy Sieber.
Professor Bret Rothstein’s The Shape of Difficulty: A Fan Letter to Unruly Objects (Penn State University Press) investigates the drive to solve puzzles and mechanical problems. Looking at such “unruly objects” as Rubik’s cubes and string disentanglements, Rothstein draws on landmark theories of play.
The College of Arts