Allison Leigh is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She is a specialist in European and Russian art of the 18th and 19th centuries and is currently completing her first book, Masculinity and Modernity in 19th-Century Russian Painting, which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2019.

Dr. Leigh received a B.A. in Art History and Russian Studies from American University in Washington D.C. and completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History at Rutgers University, where she also served as a Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Russian and Soviet Art at the Zimmerli Art Museum. She has curated several exhibitions and published on topics ranging from the role of nostalgia in Soviet-era conceptual art to the state of exhibitionary opportunities for contemporary women artists.

Her primary research interests include the development of new art historical methodologies, masculinity studies, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, and the nexus of art theory and intellectual history in the modern era.  A recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, she formerly taught in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University and as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.