The Modern & Contemporary Culture Workshop
The Modern & Contemporary Culture Workshop is an interdisciplinary forum, open to faculty members and PhD students researching topics related to the culture of the modern and contemporary periods. Essays/chapters/proposals are circulated a week in advance of our meeting to registered participants. We then spend an hour discussing the paper with the aim of improving the document for publication or submission. The workshop is convened by Christa Noel Robbins (Art History) and Paul Dobryden (German). Interested presenters should email Christa Noel Robbins.
Sponsored by the Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures and the Department of Art
2025 - 2026 SCHEDULE OF PRESENTATIONS
Register with Christa Noel Robbins to receive a copy of the paper to be workshopped or to sign up for future announcements.
FALL 2025
Jennifer Marine (PhD Candidate, Art & Architectural History, UVA), “Photographs of Tone: Margaret Watts-Hughes’s Voice Figures.” Monday, Sept 8, at 10AM in Wilson Hall 117
Kelly Moore ( Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature and Culture, UVA) "Secularism's Family History: Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (1961).” Wednesday, Oct 22, at 11AM in Wilson Hall 117
Tara Aisha Willis, Curator, Theater & Dance, Curtis R. Prime Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at PRI. November. Details to come
SPRING 2026
Taylor M. Moore (Assistant Professor, Department of History, UCSB) “Living Fossils: Modern Science, Egyptian Bodies, and the Historical Imagination”
Rachel Haines (PhD Candidate, English, UVA), "Schoolgirls in love: On the Formation of Style in the Early Queer Novel.""
Andrew Hansung Park (PhD Candidate, Art History, UCLA, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, 2025-2026), "A Different Kind of Jazz": Sam Gilliam and the Work of Improvisation.
Previous presentations
SPRING 2025
Annyston Pennington (PhD Candidate, English Department), “Faces and Fraternal Elegy: Kiki Petrosino’s White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia," Monday, February 3, 11:00AM, Wilson 142
Nicholas Morgan (Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Hampden-Sydney College), “My Hustler’s Queer Relational Economies,” Monday, February 24, 11:00AM, Wilson 142
Henry Skerritt (Assistant Professor, Art Department), TBA, Monday, April 14, 11:00AM, Wilson 142
FALL 2024
Levi Vonk (Assistant Professor, Global Studies), "The Body Migrant: Toward a New Conceptualization of the Body," , Wednesday, October 16, 11:00AM, Wilson 142
Ishani Saraf (Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT), "Display Cultures in a Scrap Market: Ephemeral Archives of the City," Monday, November 11, 11:00AM, Wilson 142
SPRING 2024
Mary Hennessy (Assistant Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), presenting a chapter from her manuscript, “Missed Connections: The Telephone Operator as Vanishing Mediator in Weimar Culture,” Monday, January 29, 11:00 AM, New Cabell Hall, Room 236
Samhita Sunya (Associate Professor of Cinema, Department of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Culture, University of Virginia), “A Globetrotting Genre: Secret Agents on Location”, Monday, February 19, 11:00 AM, New Cabell Hall, Room 236
Ian Jayne (PhD candidate in the English Department, University of Virginia), presenting a chapter from his dissertation, “Freedom's Fluctuations: Queer Affect and Contemporary Fiction,” Monday, March 18, 11:00 AM, New Cabell Hall, Room 236.
Marcel Schmid (Assistant Professor, Department of German Languages & Literatures), “Aerospace and Smartphone - Paradigms in Car Aesthetics,” Monday, April 15, 11:00 AM, New Cabell Hall, Room 236.
FALL 2023
Caroline Lillian Schopp (Assistant Professor, Dept of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University), presenting a chapter from her manuscript In-action: Viennese Actionism and the Passivities of Performance Art. Friday, September 22
Matthew Skwiat (postdoctoral College Fellow, UVa), “Feeling History: Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, and the Melodramatic Form.” Monday, October 9
Osama Siddiqui (Assistant Professor, Dept. of History & Classics, Providence College), presenting a chapter from his manuscript The Discovery of Society: Economic and Social Thought in Colonial India. Monday, October 23
David Getsy (Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History, Department of Art, UVa) “Chic Radicals: Street Drag as Critical Performance Art in the 1970s.” Monday, November 13
SPRING 2023
Meaghan Walsh, PhD Candidate, Art and Architectural History, “George Luks’s Black Masquerade: Race, Caricature, and Performance at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Monday, March 20
Eleanore Neumann, PhD Candidate, Art and Architectural History, "Crossing the Line: Somewhere between Amateur and Professional,” a chapter from her dissertation “The Global Landscapes of Maria Graham (1785-1842),” Monday, April 10
Brad Pasanek, Associate Professor, English Department, topic TBA, Monday, May 1
FALL 2022
Rachel Kravetz (Lecturer, Department of English), “Gold and Gray: Walter Pater on Venetian Painting,” September 26
Christa Noel Robbins (Associate Professor, Art History), “Scene Painting: On Occasion and Communion in Postwar Manhattan,” October 24
Nasrin Olla (Assistant Professor, Department of English and African & African American Studies), “Alienation: Fanon & Beauvoir,” December 5