Laura R. Colkitt is a doctoral candidate studying modern and contemporary art. Laura received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with an MA in art history from University of South Florida. She is the recipient of several fellowships and academic awards including the Rothman Doctoral Fellowship, Grinter Fellowship, and Jerry Cutler Graduate Student Travel Award. In her research, she explores hybridity of cultures in the global age with a specific focus on the transatlantic connection between Europe, North America, and South America. Her MA culminated with an examination of discrete globalization in “From Local to Global: Kama Wangdi Paints Bhutan's Changing Geopolitics” (2015). Her forthcoming dissertation, “In Between Relations: Liliana Porter’s Art,” aims to track a constellation of concerns that inform the contemporary art practice of Liliana Porter. She presented the second chapter, “Dissections of Decorated Depictions," at the 2020 College Art Association (CAA) conference. Recent publications include a book chapter titled “Randomness, Order, and Being” in Sandra Cinto: Acaso e Necessidade (2017) and numerous contributions to exhibition catalogues for the USF Contemporary Art Museum. Before coming to University of Florida, Laura helped curate private art collections. Her advisor is Dr. Kaira M. Cabañas.

Macarena Deij Prado is a PhD candidate under the advice of Dr. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. Her primary field of study is colonial art of the Americas. She received her MA in Art History from the University of Florida (2016) and her BA in the same discipline from the University of Chile (2013). In order to complete her MA thesis, she was awarded a research fellowship from the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, during which she conducted archival research in Cusco, Peru in 2015. Before coming to UF she worked as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile. She has also worked as an art history professor at the Instituto para el Arte y la Restauración Botticelli in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. In 2019 she curated the exhibition Felipe Meres: Global Illumination, presented at UF’s University Gallery. For her dissertation project she will be looking at how performative art developed between 1570 and 1630 in Spanish America.

mdeijprado@ufl.edu

Vivian Lantow is a PhD student studying pre-Columbian art under the guidance of Dr. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. Her topics of interest include Andean archaeology, commodity exchanges, ritual offerings found with capac hucha burials, falsifications of Pre‐Columbian artifacts, and depictions of race and social stratification by both Spanish and Indigenous artists in early colonial Peru. Vivian received her MA and BA in art history at the University of Florida. Her MA research culminated with her thesis title “Mitigating Museum Mistakes: A Case Study of a Gold Vessel from the Chimú.” In this thesis, Vivian used an unprovenienced gold cup as a case study to explore widespread issues related to the exhibition of pre-Columbian gold in museums. Before coming to the University of Florida, Vivian completed her associate of science degree in Zoo Animal Technology at Santa Fe College. She later returned to school to earn her associate of arts in Fine Arts at Santa Fe College, with a focus on drawing. While at Santa Fe Vivian worked as a gallery assistant and was an assistant curator for the Santa Fe Celebrates Collectors exhibition at the Santa Fe Gallery. 

Ryan MacLennan is a PhD student studying under Dr. Elizabeth Ross. He received his BA in both English: Writing and Philosophy from Mount Union College (University of Mount Union) in 2010. He earned his MA in History from New Mexico State University in 2015. Before attending NMSU, Ryan spent time as a music critic. Ryan’s primary research focuses on print culture in the Northern Renaissance and the consumption of food and alcohol. He is also interested in Minimalism and site-specific art of the 1960s and 1970s.

Jennifer McAninch received her BA in Art History from Arizona State University and her MA in Art Education from University of Florida, graduating both programs Summa Cum Laude. While studying abroad in Italy, she completed a museum internship at the Basilica of Santa Croce. She also participated in a study of Florentine architecture extending over a period from the Late Medieval through the Baroque. The following year, Jennifer was a member of the archeological crew for the excavation at Piazza Garibaldi in Fiesole, Italy. She is currently in her second year, pursuing a PhD in Art History with a focus on residential art and architecture from the intermediate years of the Roman Empire. Her current research project involves analyzing the design program of a second century maritime villa on the Gulf of Baratti in Populonia, Italy. Jennifer was recently admitted to the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence as a visiting scholar and presenter for the upcoming program "The City as Archive." She also served as a 2018 delegate to the national convention of the Archaeological Institute of America. Some of her peripheral areas of interest are Gender Studies in Art, Late Italian Renaissance, Ancient Mesoamerica, as well as Mid Century Modern Art and Architecture.

Valerie C. Palazzolo is a doctoral student studying the gendering of space in the later Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance with Dr. Elizabeth Ross. Her secondary interest focuses on the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. She received her MA in Art History from the University of South Florida (2011) where her research focused on Andreas Vesalius’ animated skeletons as sites for self-knowledge and self-fashioning. This research has been presented at graduate and professional symposia and conferences including: The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (2015), Indiana University, Bloomington (2011), Nicolaus Copernicus University in Turuñ, Poland (2010), and the University of Texas at Austin (2008). She has held the position of Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida - where she lives full time – since 2014 (tenured 2019). This position has allowed her to expand into art historical pedagogy and she has presented on diversity and global perspectives in the Western canon at both the annual meeting of the College Art Association (2017) and the Community College Humanities Association Southern Division Conference (2014). She has additionally taught for USF’s Study Abroad program in Paris, France and currently serves on the Program Committee of the Italian Art Society. 

Rachel Polinsky is a PhD student in Art History studying ancient Greek art. She received her BA in Art History and Ancient Civilizations from Clark University (2016) and completed her MA in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University (2018). Rachel's MA thesis examined the iconographic representation and meaning of local vs. foreign goats in Minoan zoomorphic art and the importance of having regionally specific identifications for culturally specific imagery. Now at UF, her primary research focuses on Archaic korai and ancient Greek dress/fashion. More broadly, some of Rachel’s research interests include the portrayal of gender and gendered power, race/racism discourse in the field of Classics, ancient dress/fashion and its societal valuation (i.e., dress/fashion theory), mythological and mytho-historical narratives in art and architecture, and the role, manipulation, and transformation of iconography. Rachel’s advisors are Dr. Mary Ann Eaverly and Dr. Ashley Jones.

r.polinsky@ufl.edu

Danielle Sensabaugh is a doctoral student studying under Dr. Melissa Hyde. Her research focuses on artwork of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exploring issues of gender and sexuality, cultural and artistic appropriation, and the ways that artists undermine artistic hierarchies and social norms. Danielle received an MA in Art History from American University and a BA in Art History with a minor in French from West Virginia University. Her MA research culminated in a project titled "Between Painting and Poster: Artistic and Cultural Hybridity in Henri de Toulouse Lautrec's Panels for 'La Goulue'" (2015), exploring Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s relationship with the cancanuse Louise Weber. Before coming to Florida, Danielle taught high school social studies and AP Art History for four years in Arlington, VA.  

Allison Westerfield is a doctoral student studying modern and contemporary art under the advice of Dr. Rachel Silveri. She received her BA in Arts Administration from the University of West Florida. She went on to attend Savannah College of Art and Design earning her MA in Art History. Her current research focuses on the medical invention and visual construction of hysteria by Jean-Martin Charcot and its feminist afterlives, as women artists worked to reclaim feminine madness from its patriarchal medicalization. Outside of academia, she works as an independent curator. Recent exhibitions include mini golf of sensual sports photographs by McKinna Anderson at Florida Mining Gallery and Waiting Room at Laundromat Art Space in Miami.