CAA News Today

Can you tell our members about your current academic post, research interests, and larger scholarly motivations? 

I am currently Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research is in late modern and contemporary art and visual culture. I’m an interdisciplinary theorist who utilizes methodologies and critical approaches from various disciplines and fields. Much of my research focuses on the conjunction between ideology and visuality, and I often explore the interrelations between identities and cultural identifications (gender, sexuality, race, and disability) and contemplate the complexities of their envisioning.  

In recent years, I’ve been exploring the broader multidisciplinary landscape of visually based research. The increasing expansiveness of arts-related and visual culture scholarship across disciplines and fields has inspired me to consider the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration. As society has become inundated with images—many of which are intended to spread propaganda, disinformation, insidious forms of social engineering, and nefarious capitalist agendas—there’s an ever-growing multidisciplinary urgency to critically contend with the visual. In response to this complex visual landscape, there is a need for arts writing to embrace a broader range of methodological and critical frameworks. My approach has always been to maintain an openness to embracing emerging ideas that hold the potential to transform how we envision the social role of artistic production, art history, theory and criticism, and visual culture.  

I’m also motivated by the failures of empathy and decency that plague our world, not to mention within many of the institutions we operate in. My work thus far is a reflection of my ethical commitment to inclusivity and an expansive interest in culture. I have always had a strong impulse not to look away and a resistance to disidentifying with the humanity and social struggles of others. I have committed myself to always fostering empathy and mutuality to the extent that I can—while maintaining a parallel dedication to disciplinary and methodological expansiveness. My commitment to inclusivity and multidisciplinary is a priority and has encouraged me to bring together diverse artists, scholars, and cultural producers from various backgrounds into critical conversation.  

What is your vision for Art Journal during your term as Editor-in-Chief?  

My vision is rooted in a commitment to supporting pathbreaking creative and intellectual work—and modeling an editorial approach invested in the transnational exchange of ideas. I am inspired by new critical approaches that may break from scholarly trends, ideological fixities, and expected modes of thought. To achieve this aim, I acknowledge that resisting the abusive forms of social control, division, and marginalization that plague our world necessitates embracing often unexpected perspectives. Doing so, I believe, will significantly expand the journal’s reader base. However, technology has also presented challenges to the traditional means by which intellectual ideas are circulated and valued in our discipline and its related fields. The rise of Internet-based, public-facing art discourses occurring in online journals has created new readerships and a broader expansion of emergent ideas. I truly believe that Art Journal can be at the forefront of expanding how we envision the social role of the arts. 

I also look forward to locating and supporting impactful artmaking that may be adrift from representational and conceptual trends and the often overbearing dictates of market forces. Building strong relationships with artists is a personal priority, but I endeavor to acknowledge how new technologies have led to an ever-expanding understanding (or reimagining) of what an art object is formally and aesthetically. And I have always been critical of the binary-based dividing lines so often drawn between aesthetic formalism and the concerns of identity and representation. I am committed to breaking free of these non-productive delineations—while maintaining a commitment to openness and mutuality that necessitates listening to, respecting, and supporting a broad range of cultural producers.  

What motivated you to become E-I-C of AJ? How does your research and public scholarship dovetail with your vision for the journal?  

Art Journal has been a fixture in my life from my undergraduate and graduate school years to my professional career. I’ve always been an avid reader of the journal. It had a huge impact on me intellectually as an undergraduate art student, and during those years, I started to become more interested in the histories and critical ideas around art than its making. However, at the time, I had no idea what to do with that interest. In 2004, a year before I completed my doctoral degree at Cornell, I published my first feature-length article in Art Journal: “Hip-Hop vs. High Art: Notes on Race as Spectacle.” That publication was pivotal to my burgeoning career as a scholar. At the time, I had simultaneously begun publishing in NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, which, during those years, was published at Cornell by editors Salah Hassan (my advisor) and the curator and critic Okwui Enwezor. Because of their commitments to greater inclusivity and internationalism in art scholarship, NKA, and Art Journal were personally the most impactful art publications during my formative years. Both gave me recognition and a strong sense of professional possibility. In the following years, I published in Art Journal on several more occasions, eventually leading to serving on the AJ Editorial Board from 2016 to 2020. 

 Throughout my career, Art Journal has been a leading forum for progressive arts scholarship, and it has profoundly informed how I approach my own work. The journal has been particularly impactful for underrecognized scholars, artists, and arts professionals, so I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to continue and expand upon the exemplary editorial work of my predecessors. The values and commitments that drive my scholarship have always been intertwined with Art Journal. Few art publications are as open as AJ, so it’s a natural home for me intellectually and situates me within a milieu where I can engage in productive and enriching conversations with a diverse group of cultural producers. I endeavor to break from the conventional thinking of my discipline, so I seek out artists and intellectuals with similar commitments, especially those who are compelled to make a measurable difference in the lives of others and, by extension, are committed to the well-being of society. In keeping with Cornell’s founding principle, “. . . any person . . . any study,” I am a strong advocate for nurturing and protecting the unfettered intellectual possibilities of scholars within my discipline and its related fields. Regardless of their identities, scholars should feel their intellectual and scholarly endeavors are supported and cultivated. And who they are perceived to be should not hinder the perception of their expertise. At root, my vision is about fostering inclusivity, new ideas, and intellectual freedom.  

And finally, what are you reading/viewing these days? What is inspiring you?   

Lately, I’ve been listening to Helga Davis’s podcast, HELGA, which has some terrific—and often very personal and reflective—interviews with artists and other impactful creatives and thought leaders. I’m currently fascinated by several films: Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2022) and Civil War (dir. Alex Garland, 2024). While completely divergent narratively and visually, both films engage with the often-fraught condition of being a producer of images and aesthetic objects. Showing Up envisions the contemplative quietude of creative practice, art school, and the subtle forms of competition, insecurity, and isolation of being a gallery artist—while Civil War is a disturbing exploration of the ethical quandaries and psychic traumas of being a war photographer. I’ve been thinking about these films because they wrestle with the role of art and artists in a time where the visual matters more than ever. I recently re-watched Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981), and I started thinking about how much—because of the COVID-19 pandemic—I missed having lengthy in-person conversations with others. I think we’re all coming out of that isolation and attempting to relearn how to interact again. And that interaction is necessary for empathy, reciprocity, and human connection. 

Writer and director Cord Jefferson’s 2023 film American Fiction has also dominated my thinking lately. Among many intersecting themes, the film satirizes how perilous Black representation can be—and the particular quandary of the Black cultural producer negotiating a desire for individual expression in the face of a culture industry that often demands ethnic caricatures, trauma narratives, and Black stereotypes.

In terms of books, I’ve been reading Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed (2018), edited by Kate Siegel; Craig Owens’s Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture (1992); Percival Everett’s novel Erasure (2001); To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (eds. Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis; Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012); Göran Therborn’s The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (1980), Zahi Zalloua’s Žižek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future (2020); and Norman Mailer’s selected essays Mind of an Outlaw (2014).