Art History Grad Students Travel @UWArtSci

MA student Jennifer Beetem received a DAAD Summer Course Grant, which she used to attend a four-week course in Kassel, Germany, titled “Learn German – Experience Art.” “DAAD” are the German initials for the German Academic Exchange Service. She did thesis research after the course, working with original art periodicals and artists’ letters in archives at the Berliner Staatsbibliothek, the Deutsches Literaturartiv in Marbach, and the Deutsches Kunstarchiv in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Beetem was supported during the 2010-2011 academic year with a FLAS Fellowship for German language study.

In addition to the previously mentioned conference funding for Kris Anderson, three other students received a 2011 Thelma I. Pell Art History Graduate Research/Recognition Award:

MA student Erin Giffin used her funding for thesis research in Europe. She started in Paris where she closely studied Il Moro, a 17th-century sculpture by Nicolas Cordier, which resides at the Louvre Museum. She then traveled to Rome to participate in the six-week Classical Summer School at the American Academy of Rome. While in Rome, she conducted additional thesis research at the Vatican Secret Archives and the American Academy’s excellent library.

MA student Yve Chavez used her award to begin her thesis research on the basket weaving practices of southern California’s “Mission” Indian populations. She traveled to California to attend a gathering of the California Indian Basketweavers Association. She also interviewed basket weavers, basket scholars, and museum curators and visited numerous museums and sites to study collections of early and contemporary baskets as well as plants used in the baskets.

PhD student Jennifer Henneman will be using her funds to help support her attendance at the annual North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, which will be at Vanderbilt University in early November 2011. While there, she will present a paper titled “Her Reputation Precedes Her: The International Performance of Self through the Dissemination of Cartes-de-Visite,” which will be part of a panel titled “Private Property, Public Commodity: Gender and the Victorian Marketplace.” Her presentation developed from a paper written for an Autumn Quarter 2010 seminar taught by Professor Susan Casteras.