RESEARCH

I believe that research, whether conducted at a major research institution or in a liberal arts setting focused primarily on teaching, is an integral component to maintaining a vibrant and stimulating intellectual environment among both students and faculty. My own interests and approach toward research has been greatly influenced by my training as a comparatist and span multiple national literatures and historical periods. In addition, I am drawn to an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach that recognizes that important ideas do not often conform to the limitations imposed by traditional disciplinary boundaries.

My dissertation, Making France Visible: Visual Technologies of Nationalism, examines a series of visual strategies that were instrumental in constructing an image of the French nation and its citizens in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In it, I look at the invention of photography, the formation and restoration of national monuments under the auspices of the preservation of the patrimoine, the foundation of public museums, the circulation of personal and press images made possible by the lithography, and, finally, the use of colonial expositions as propaganda tools of the state for nationalistic ends. My goal in this work is to show that innovations in image production and visual representation provided the means to instantiate the republican rhetoric of the nation in the post-Revolutionary era.

I invite you to download a fuller description of my dissertation.