Ilya Repin in Paris:
Mediating French Modernism

This article explores the development of a singular painting by Russia’s most famous realist painter, Il’ia Repin. The work was conceived during Repin’s stay in Paris from 1873-75 and careful analysis shows him searching for a stylistic language that had universal translatability in this moment, one that he importantly associated with the French artist Edouard Manet.  Understanding how Repin came to center his painting on Manet's quintessential types - cocottes and flâneurs - allows for a new understanding of transnational connections in late 19th-century art, one in which Russian artists mediated French modernism as it was developing.
Cultural Bilingualism in 18th-Century Russian Portraiture

This essay centers on portraits of members of the Golitsyn and Chernyshëv families made over the course of the eighteenth century. As the state implemented a top-down Europeanization of the narrow upper class in this period, portraiture became a key tool in showing one’s ability to conform to the new ideals of Russian citizenship through the adoption of fundamental social graces.  Beneath this surface veneer, however, noblemen and women of the Petrine generation shared an overwrought hybrid cultural identity. It was left to succeeding generations to become truly culturally bilingual by internalizing the mindsets and beliefs that had originally been imposed externally by decree.
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Horizontal Art History: Critiquing Modernist Geographies

This essay explores the potential that transnational case studies might have for undermining the hierarchical, vertical discourse which has so long characterized the study of Western European Art. Focusing on a single year in artistic production – 1915 – the essay puts in dialogue artworks produced in Russia, France, the Netherlands, and Austria in that year in order to experiment with flattening the hegemony of the “Western” narrative by restoring the authority of a single, unique historical moment.
Social Media in the Art History Classroom
(co-authored with Lauren Jimerson)

This essay for the new Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History explores the ways social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram can be used in teaching art history. Utilizing these technologies has the potential to increase student engagement, stimulate interest in the subject matter, and embolden students to see art and culture as a vital part of their daily lives. Faculty in art history, and related humanities fields, should strongly consider how platforms like these might allow us to better reach our students in an increasingly digital and data-driven world.