Faculty

Catherine Lusheck is Chair of the Department of Art + Architecture and Professor of Art History & Museum Studies. She holds a doctorate in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a specialist in early modern European art and curatorial practice. Her research interests include Renaissance drawings culture, early modern visual rhetoric and the classical tradition, and artistic emulation and self-representation in the art of Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640). Over...

Paula J. Birnbaum is the inaugural Ann Getty Endowed Chair and Academic Director of the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at USF. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and holds a doctorate in Art History from Bryn Mawr College. Professor Birnbaum is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.

Birnbaum’s research focuses on modern and contemporary art in...

Nathan S. Dennis is Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at USF. He specializes in late antique and medieval art and theology, particularly of the Mediterranean and Middle East, including the material and visual traditions of Western Christian, Byzantine, Jewish, and Islamic cultures.

Professor Dennis has published a number of articles and book chapters on the art, architecture, archaeology, and theology of early Christianity, especially baptisteries and the ritual of baptism...

Karen M. Fraser earned her PhD from Stanford University, where she studied both traditional Japanese art and the history of photography. Her research focuses on modern Japanese visual culture, with particular interests in Japanese photography from ca. 1860 through the 1930s, cross-cultural interactions and influences between Asia and the West, gender issues, and museum and exhibition history.

Professor Fraser’s teaching experience includes survey and upper-level courses covering both...

Fatemeh Tashakori earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy of Art and Art History from The University of Texas at Dallas and served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. Collaborating with the Dallas Museum of Art, her research delves into 17th to 19th-century artistic exchanges between the Islamic world and the West during a period of global and sociocultural convergence in the early modern era. She specializes on gender and sexuality in Islamic Art, modern...

Jessica Snow received a BA in art studio from UC Davis and an MFA from Mills College. She also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Université de la Nouvelle-Sorbonne III. Squeak Carnwath, Hung Liu, and Wayne Thiebaud were memorable teachers, to whom she's indebted for their mentoring.

Jessica has had exhibitions at Le Pavé d’Orsay in Paris, Galleri Urbane in Dallas, Jen Bekman Projects in NYC, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, H...

Celia Stahr, PhD, developed a love of art and culture due to her many experiences traveling to Cuba, Mexico, East and Southern Africa, Western Europe, China, and every region of the United States. She has a background in modern and contemporary art history with a particular focus on issues of race and gender, as well as in African art and the diaspora. Stahr's research focuses on artists who cross cultural boundaries and the political, social, artistic, and psychological ramifications of such...

Jenifer Wofford is a professional fine artist and illustrator who shows her work both nationally and internationally. She has presented projects in the Bay Area at venues including YBCA, the de Young Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art.

Wofford was the recipient of a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and a featured artist (with her collaborators) in the 2018 Manila Biennale. In 2020 she was awarded a public art commission from the Asian...

Jean Y. Audigier received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of interest include the relationship between the visual arts, poetry, and music; The School of Barbizon & the Impressionists; the graphic works of Rembrandt, Picasso, and Chagall; the works of contemporary artists Chemiakin, Kuper, Baskin, Brisson, and Arranz-Bravo.