Magic Realism, Identity, and Belonging in Mid-Century America
Supervised by Professor David Peters Corbett and Dr Indie A. Choudhury
My research addresses the intersection of visual culture and identity in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.
In my dissertation, I examine the American magic realists working in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s, a group composed of women and queer men. I reconstruct the complex social and creative networks among these artists and investigate how their intersecting, often contested identities shaped their artistic production and reception. In doing so, I seek to reframe American magic realism not as an isolated or marginal phenomenon, but as a revealing site through which to understand broader formations of modernism in the United States.
Education
- MA, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- BA, History and Literature, Harvard College
Experience
- Editor, Immediations
- Postgraduate Research Associate, Yale Center for British Art
- Associate Cataloguer, Sotheby’s
- Humanities Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks & National Gallery of Art
- Curatorial Intern, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Student Guide, Harvard Art Museums
Grants & Awards
- Robert L. Middlekauff Fellowship, The Huntington
Papers & Talks
- “America, a Prophecy,” Beyond Britain Talk, Yale Center for British Art (November 2025)
- “Apparatus of Empire: 19th-Century British Photography in India,” Postgraduate Symposium, Yale University (August 2025)
- “Between the Lines: Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein’s Quiet Defiance,” Deviant Women Symposium, Bristol University (July 2025)
Research Interests
- American art, 1850-1950
- Global modernism
- Gender and sexuality
- Women artists
- Museum studies