Issue 16, Past Issues
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Contributors / Issue 16: The Cultural Visualization of Hurricane Katrina

Contributors

Nicola Mann is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York. Nicola received a first class B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Creative Arts, Surrey, and an M.A. in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. Mann’s dissertation draws on the interpretative practices developed by the disciplines of film- and television-studies, art history, spatial theory, and community activism studies, to investigate the destructive nature of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century popular visual representations of Chicago’s public housing (1970-2010). Her work has been published in Cross-Cultural Poetics, Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, Brock Review, and in the anthology, Habitus of the ‘Hood (Intellect Press, forthcoming).

Victoria Pass is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York, finishing her dissertation, “Strange Glamour” which examines fashion and art in the 1920s and 1930s. Vicky received her B.A. in Art History from Boston University, and her M.A. in Art History from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Most recently, she presented her work on designer Elsa Schiaparelli at the 2011 College Art Association conference and at the 2010 Fashion in Fiction conference, and gave a lecture on psychedelic fashion at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. She has also given papers at the Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture Association and at National Popular Culture Association conferences. Two of Vicky’s short essays on Sex and the City have just been published in the book September 11 in Popular Culture: A Guide.

Maria T. Brodine is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Wenner-Gren Dissertation Grant recipient. She is conducting ethnographic research in New Orleans, LA, on the post-Katrina reconstruction of flood protection and coastal restoration. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University, she earned her B.A. with honors in English and Anthropology from San Diego State University (SDSU). Her interests include material culture studies, technology, arts and media, science studies, multispecies relationships, qualitative research methodologies, and public and applied anthropology.

Charles Gentry is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. His interests include film and media studies, black cultural studies, performance studies, arts management, and cultural policy. Charles received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, earned a graduate certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures, and was the Assistant Curator of Film & Video Art at the Flint Institute of Arts from 2005 to 2007. His dissertation, “The Othello Effect: The Performance of Black Masculinity in Mid-Century Cinema,” is about political culture in the U.S. during the early Cold War era and the film careers of performers such as Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier.

Brian Greening is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Saint Louis University. He is currently working on his dissertation, entitled “Representation in New Orleans: Race, Space and Visibility in New Orleans Since 1965.” In it he focuses on New Orleans, the Louisiana Superdome, and the 40-year span between two of the most disastrous hurricanes—Betsy and Katrina—to hit the area. Completed in the mid-1970s, the Superdome symbolizes a fundamental economic shift that affected the city’s Central Business District and surrounding communities. Using the Superdome as his primary object of study, Greening reveals how the domed stadium project parallels other, similar city undertakings in the years that follow. His other areas of research interest have ranged from hip hop to southern history to gender studies.

William M. Taylor is Professor of Architecture at the University of Western Australia where he teaches architectural design and history and theory of the built environment. His most recent book, co-authored with Michael Levine, Prospects for an Ethics of Architecture will appear this year (Routledge). Other work includes The Vital Landscape, Nature and the Built Environment in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate, 2004), an edited collection The Geography of Law, Landscape and Regulation (Hart, Oxford, 2006) and the co-edited book An Everyday Transience: The Urban Imaginary of Goldfields Photographer John Joseph Dwyer (UWA Press, 2010). He is currently researching the subject of architecture and transience and preparing a collection of essays on architecture, ships, and the sea.

Lindsay Tuggle has a doctorate in Literary Studies from the University of Sydney. Her dissertation focused on the evolution of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855-1892) and its influences on cultural mourning practices. She is currently working on a scholarly monograph that traces strategies of anonymous and incorporative mourning across the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, beginning with the American Civil War. Her work has been published in the journal The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, and in the edited collections Remaking Literary History (eds. Helen Groth and Paul Sheehan) and Mourning and Its Hospitalities / after (eds. Tony Thwaites and Jude Seaboyer, forthcoming).

David Redmon is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. His films in collaboration with Ashley Sabin have screened at Sundance, SXSW, Human Rights Watch, IDFA, and the Museum of Modern Art. The Sundance Channel, Documentary Channel, Link TV, Free Speech TV, NHK, Current TV, Scandinavian, New Zealand, European, Middle Eastern, and Australian television stations have broadcast their movies. Sabin and Redmon started the distribution branch of their production company – Carnivalesque Films – to help bring films to new audiences. Carnivalesque distributes October Country; Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo; Citizen Architect; Loot; Orphans; Manhattan, KS; Holy Modal Rounders; The New Year Parade; and Woodpecker.

Ashley Sabin has a B.A. in Art History from the Pratt Institute. Her films in collaboration with David Redmon have screened at Sundance, SXSW, Human Rights Watch, IDFA, and the Museum of Modern Art. The Sundance Channel, Documentary Channel, Link TV, Free Speech TV, NHK, Current TV, Scandinavian, New Zealand, European, Middle Eastern, and Australian television stations have broadcast their movies. Sabin and Redmon started the distribution branch of their production company – Carnivalesque Films – to help bring films to new audiences. Carnivalesque distributes October Country; Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo; Citizen Architect; Loot; Orphans; Manhattan, KS; Holy Modal Rounders; The New Year Parade; and Woodpecker.

James Johnson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. Professor Johnson’s current research traverses pragmatist political thought, democratic theory, philosophy of social science, and cultural theories of politics. Professor Johnson is co-author, with Jack Knight, of The Priority of Democracy: A Pragmatist Account, which will be published by Princeton University Press in 2011.

Godfre Leung is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. He has taught art history at the University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Currently, he is working on a dissertation entitled “The White Wall in Postwar Art: The Aesthetics of the Exhibition Space.”

Lara Mazurski is a Ph.D. candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam (UVA).

Jessica McDonald is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. Her interests cover the fields of photography, photographically-illustrated books, and museum studies.

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