2026 Graduate Symposium

One & Done: Single Object Studies

Symposium Schedule

Wednesday, March 25th

5:30 | Keynote Address| Campbell 160

Dr. Jennifer Raab, Professor of History of Art, Yale University, "Writing the Object, Writing the World”

Dr. Jennifer Raab will deliver the keynote lecture for the symposium One and Done: Single Object Studies in which Art and Architectural History graduate students present research centered around a singular object. In this lecture, Dr. Raab will focus on her recent publication Relics of War: The History of a Photograph which examines how one photograph—carefully staged by Clara Barton through acts of collecting, naming, and labeling—transformed salvaged artifacts from a Civil War prison camp into material testimony, serving as both evidence of absence and witness to wartime suffering. The lecture will also reflect more broadly on photography, political violence, and cultural memory, as well as Dr. Raab’s methodological commitment to single object writing.

Thursday, March 26th

9:00 to 9:30 | Pastries and Coffee | Dome Room, Rotunda

Dissemination of Objects (moderated by Slenka Botello)

9:45 to 11:30 | Dome Room, Rotunda

Jessy Boyer, California State University, “The Disseminator: Finding Gerardo Velázquez’s Lost Legacy”

Kathryn Spears, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Between Goddess and Empress: Iconographic Ambiguity in a Provincial Roman Bronze”

Béatrice Duchastel de Montrouge, Temple University, “Je Me Souviens: An Evolving Public Memory on the École Polytechnique Massacre, as Shown Through the Place du 6-Décembre-1989”

11:30 AM to 12:30 | Catered Lunch | Dome Room, Rotunda

Materiality of Objects (moderated by Leo Palma)

12:45 to 2:30 | Chapel

Ainaz Fazlfarhadi, Southern Illinois University, “Woven from the Land: Ecology and Memory in a Qashqai Khorjin”

Catalina Cherñavvsky Sequeira, University of Texas at Austin, “Multiple Originals: Process, Myth, and Material in Belkis Ayón’s Vamos”

Liza Wimbish, University of Virginia, “An Autistic Piece of Paper: Relationality in Dorothea Rockburne’s Rubbing Piece (1973)”

Embodiment of Objects (moderator TBA)

2:45 to 4:30 | Chapel

Cole Gruber, University of Chicago, “Carrying Art to its Cradle: The Makapansgat Pebble as an Origin for Art”

Alex Del Dago, University of Virginia, “Exposing the Horrors of Violence: Paul Cadmus's ‘The Herrin Massacre’ and a Queer Vision of the Strikebreaker”

Cole Graham, Ohio State University, “(Dis)figuring Desire in Stehender männlicher Akt mit rotem Lendentuch”

5:00 to 6:00 | Reception + Closing Remarks | Fayerweather Lounge