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 18th and 19th-century European and Russian art and is currently completing her first book, which traces how the changes wrought by modernity impacted notions of what constituted masculinity in Russian culture over the course of the nineteenth century. She 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 and Design at Montclair State University, 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.
Upcoming Courses:
Women's Experience in Art Single Artist Seminar: Edgar Degas The Art World: Money, Power, and Aesthetics Past: Art Appreciation Introduction to Modern Art Modern to Contemporary: An Introduction to Art History (1789-1900) An Introduction to Art History (1900-2016) Introductory Survey to Art History: Renaissance to Contemporary Survey of the Arts II: Renaissance through Modern Russian, Soviet, and Central Asian Art Single Year Seminar - 1820 Studies in Art History: Orientalism Single Artist Seminar: Edouard Manet Single Artist Seminar: Jacques-Louis David Synartesis Realism How Art Teaches You to See What is Art? (And Who Decides?) Women and Art Modern Philosophies of Art |
March 29, 2018 | North Carolina
"Soldiers, Brothers, Painters, and Sons: Pavel Fedotov & Masculinity in the Mid-19th Century" Invited Guest Lecture, Depts. of Russian Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies Davidson College April 7, 2018 | Texas “Ilya Repin and Edouard Manet: Modernist Interlocutors” Invited Keynote Speaker, Fourth Annual Art History Symposium, University of Texas at Tyler October 26 - 27, 2018 | Poznań, Poland “An Experiment in Horizontal Art History: Critiquing Modernist Geographies” Theorizing the Geography of East-Central European Art Conference, Piotr Piotrowski Center and Adam Mickiewicz University December 6 - 9, 2018 | Boston “Performing Gender: Aleksandr Ivanov and ‘Deviant’ Masculinities in the Mid-19th Century” Panel: Performative Paintings: Exploring Gender, Spatial, and National Identities in 19th- and 20th-Century Russia Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) 2018 Convention 
Leigh on Rosalind Blakesley
and Margaret Samu *** From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture, (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014) Leigh on Rosalind Blakesley
*** The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757-1878 (Yale University Press, 2016) Leigh on Andreas Schönle, Andrei Zorin,
and Alexei Evstratov *** The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762–1825: Public Role and Subjective Self (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016) *forthcoming in June 2018* |
Essay: "Future Ruins: Time, Memory and History in the Work of Komar and Melamid"
University of Pittsburgh | Studies in Slavic Cultures Journal, Issue 8 (August 2009) Curator's Essay to Catalog for the Exhibition "Jersey Women Artists Now," Montclair State University (March 2014)
'Embodied Memories: The Work of Trauma in Art," Newsletter Essay discussing symposium on art at trauma at the Zimmerli Art Museum, NJ (Spring 2011)
“Russian Occidentalism: The Hybrid Self in Eighteenth-Century Russian Portraiture”
(to be published in the anthology Terms: Proceedings of the 34th World Congress of Art History, edited by Zhu Qingsheng (Beijing: CIHA Congress) **forthcoming in 2018** “Il'ia Repin in Paris:
Mediating French Modernity” (Article solicited for a cluster on transnational connections in Russian art) **estimated in fall 2018** “Blood, Skin, and Paint:
Karl Briullov in 1832” (Article solicited for publication in a forthcoming anthology) **estimated in spring 2019** “Men’s Time:
Pavel Fedotov and the Pressures of Mid-19th-Century Masculinity” (Article forthcoming in SEEJ) **estimated in fall 2018** “Between Communism and Abstraction: Kazimir Malevich’s White on White in America”
(Article forthcoming) **estimated in fall 2018** |
Recent News
Dr. Leigh delivered the Keynote Address at the Fourth Annual Art History Symposium at the University of Texas at Tyler. WATCH HERE: drive.google.com/file/d/1uKepPp2_zJszksa6CjRwEefygxel72AW/view
LISTEN HERE: krvs.org/post/apres-midi-october-24-2017-prof-allison-leigh-visual-arts-lecture-movement-lab-dance-group Dr. Leigh was interviewed by KRVS (88.7 FM Radio Acadie) about the metaphysics of vision and teaching art history in the 21st century. 
Dr. Leigh was featured for the 'Member Spotlight' by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) organization.
http://www.aseees.org/membership/allison-leigh 
Dr. Leigh received the
Leonardo Award for "Best Emerging Researcher Presentation" at the International conference 'Re-Create Media Art Histories: Theories, Methods and Practices of Research Creation in the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology' (Montréal, Canada | 2015) WATCH THE PANEL HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0gEfPwMu_g |
Through an investigation of paintings largely unknown outside of Russia, this innovative study traces how the changes wrought by modernity impacted notions of what constituted masculinity in Russian culture over the course of the nineteenth century. Masculinity and Modernity in 19th-Century Russian Painting will be published by Bloomsbury in 2019. 
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