Art History on Fire
Art History on Fire is a public research project focused on creating dialogue about the field of Art History in the present moment. Co-hosted by Rebecca Tucker (CC) and Deborah Hutton (TCNJ), the project consists of interviews with teachers, critics, curators, and others who practice art history. Our aim is to spark conversation about the challenges and possibilities we face, to showcase voices from across the field, and to generate connections that will, we hope, help us build a strong future for art history as a discipline.
Art History on Fire Interviews
Listen to our interview here (28:10). Or, read a transcript here.
Today's guests:
Deborah Hutton is a Professor of Art History at The College of New Jersey. Her research explores art made for the Muslim courts of South Asia between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, and she is the author of several books and articles in that area. Dr. Hutton teaches a range of courses on Asian and Islamic art and visual culture. She also teaches and writes about global art history more broadly, with the objective of promoting a more global and equitable history of art. To that end, she has co-authored several art history textbooks, including The History of Art: A Global View and The History of Asian Art: A Global View.
Rebecca Tucker is Professor of Art at Colorado College. Her area is art history in the early modern period, and her scholarly focus is on issues of patronage, history of collecting, and display in Northern Europe, as well as trade, cultural transmission, and global artistic exchange. In addition to edited volumes and public art history books, Rebecca has published in journals such as Art History, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, and The Seventeenth Century. She helped establish and currently teaches in CC’s Museum Studies program, an interdisciplinary curriculum featuring experiential museum learning for undergraduate students.
Listen to our interview here (54:50). Or, read a transcript of our conversation with Dr. Holzman here.
Dr. Laura M. Holzman is Professor of Art History and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Curatorial Practices and Visual Art at Indiana University Indianapolis, where she is also Chair of the Department of Art Education, Art History, and Art Therapy. As a specialist in engaged art history, she activates art, its history, and its institutions to strengthen communities, expand democratic discourse, and create a more equitable world. She holds a BA in art history with highest honors from Swarthmore College and a MA and PhD in visual studies from the University of California, Irvine. For more information about Laura's work and projects, visit her webpage.
For the third installment in the Art History on Fire series, we are delighted to speak with Dr. Michael Fowler.
Listen to our interview here (1:24:14). Or, read a transcript of our conversation here.
Dr. Fowler is Associate Professor of Art History in the Art and design program at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. Prof. Fowler is an award-winner faculty member and a prolific scholar in the field of art and architecture of the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia. He works on a wide variety of topics including material religion, the visualization of violence, time and memory, the social construction of identity, and human-animal relations. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Prof. Fowler is affiliated with the departments of Classical and Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs at East Tennessee State.
Listen to our interview with Dr. Maggie M. Williams (1:06) here; or, read a transcript of our conversation here.
Maggie Williams has a PhD in Art History from Columbia University, where she specialized in early medieval European Art, with a secondary focus in the Arts of Africa, specifically Yoruba religious imagery in Nigeria and the diaspora (Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil). She has always been interested in developing a global perspective and practicing anti-racist methods. She taught at William Paterson University in New Jersey for nearly 15 years, where she earned the rank of Full Professor with tenure. Her book, Icons of Irishness from the Middle Ages to the Modern World, considered nationalism, group identity, and the expression of ethnic pride through visual symbols. In 2019, she published a follow-up article called “ ‘Celtic’ Crosses and the Myth of Whiteness,” which she now views as her most meaningful work.
She was also a co-founder of the Material Collective, a group that sought to make our field more inclusive, and more open to speculative methods and creative practices. The MC’s work includes an extensive list of conference papers and sessions, publications, interviews, and public projects including Different Visions, an open-access online journal that continues to publish truly innovative work. More information can be found at differentvisions.org.
Listen to our interview with Dr. Christine Hahn and Dr. Anne Marie Butler of Kalamazoo College (1:03) here. Or, read a transcript of our conversation here.
Christine Young-Kyung Hahn is a lifelong midwesterner, born in Detroit, raised in Lansing, and a professor of art history at Kalamazoo College since 2008. She is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, MN and received her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. While rooted in the midwest, her research questions have taken her around the world, digging through archives in Paris, New York, and Seoul. To support these endeavors, Dr. Hahn has worked on exhibitions for the Art Institute of Chicago, for the books division at the University of Chicago Press, and for higher education development at the University of Michigan Law School. Her work on modern Korean artists and exhibitions has been supported by the Fulbright and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Anne Marie E. Butler is Associate Professor of Art History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI, Land of the Council of the Three Fires, USA. Her research focuses on Southwest Asia North Africa studies and contemporary art of the region and its diaspora, surrealism studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory. She has published in ASAP/Journal, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, The London Review of Education and Radical Teacher. She is an editor of two volumes, Surrealism and Ecology with Donna Roberts and Iveta Slavkova (Vernon Press, 2026), and Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa with Sascha Crasnow (Intellect Press, 2024).
Listen to our interview with Dr. Kirstin Ringelberg (0:57) here; or, access a transcript of our conversation here.
Kirstin Ringelberg has a PhD in Art History from UNC-Chapel Hill and is a Professor in the Department of History & Geography at Elon University in North Carolina. At Elon, Ringelberg has taught 24 distinct courses and mentored 38 distinct undergraduate research projects, in addition to 23 museum internships and undergraduate teaching apprenticeships. They are the recipient of the college-wide Daniels-Danieley Award for Excellence in Teaching as well as the Every Page Foundation Fellowship at the Clark Art Institute. Their first book, Redefining Gender in American Impressionist Studio Paintings: Work Place/Domestic Space, is available in paperback from Routledge/Ashgate, and they are currently at work on their second, Chez Madeleine Lemaire: Gender and Genre in the Queer Belle Époque.
On deck! our conversation with Kerry Lucinda Brown at SCAD. Stay tuned...
Dr. Kerry Lucinda Brown currently serves as Associate Chair of Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where she guides strategic planning, curriculum development, and faculty mentorship across the department. With over 15 years of experience in academia, she is committed to inclusive pedagogy, student success, and strengthening the role of visual culture in higher education. Her scholarly work explores Newar Buddhist art and ritual in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, with a focus on sacred landscapes, identity formation, and public spectacle as tools of cultural heritage and memory. Since 1999, Dr. Brown has conducted extensive field research across South Asia and the Himalayas, including Fulbright-funded research in Nepal. Dr. Brown contributes to major museum initiatives and educational platforms, including the Rubin Museum’s Project Himalayan Art and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center’s Cultural Property Experts On Call program. Her work bridges academic research and public humanities, fostering global dialogue through teaching, scholarship, and institutional leadership.
Next up: our conversation with Dr. Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson at MCAD, and Dr. Karen Barber of Anne Arundel Community College.
Professor of Liberal Arts, Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota for her dissertation Design for Living: German and Swedish Design in the Early Twentieth Century. She has a Fil. Lic. in konstvetenskap [art history] from Lunds University in Sweden, where she focused on contemporary art and social consciousness in the work of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon. In addition to a Fulbright scholarship in Sweden, she holds an MFA in printmaking and fiber arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Gasterland-Gustafsson is currently head of costume design and construction as well as serving on the board for Out on a Limb Dance Theater Company and School, chairs the board at Soo Visual Art Center, and serves on the Second Shift Studio Space board. She is currently translating Ellen Key’s 1899 design treatise Skönhet för alla [Beauty for all] into English to be published by Aino Press in late 2026.
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