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After working for five years in the library field, I realized my passion for art history was unquenched, and received my M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park, where my principal advisor was Anthony Colantuono. My primary fields of study were 17^th-century French and Italian art, and minor field Venetian Renaissance painting.

Research Interests: 17^th-century French art and theory; Women Artists of the Early Modern period.

The research for my dissertation on the little-known but significant 17^th-century French sculptor, Michel Anguier, took me to Paris and other locations in France. I have published some of this research (see below), but the current focus of my research is on another topic altogether – the life stories and artworks of women artists in early modern Europe. I’m working on two book projects:

one on women artists & old age, and a book concerning the 19^th-century American artist May Alcott Nieriker and her publication on Studying Art Abroad and How To Do It Cheaply (1879).

Selected Publications:

- “The Multivalence of May Alcott Nieriker’s Studying Art Abroad and How To Do It Cheaply” forthcoming in Studies in Travel Literature (fall 2012).

Life Stories of Women Artists, 1550-1800: an Anthology (Ashgate, 2009).

- “Anecdotal Insights: Changing Perceptions of Italian Women Artists in 18^th-century Life Stories,” Eighteenth-Century Women, vol. 5 (2008).

- “Sex, Lies, and Anecdotes: Gender Relations in the Life Stories of Italian Women Artists, 1550-1800,” Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art

vol. VI (2005):17-37.

- “Characterizing the Passions: Michel Anguier’s Challenge to Le Brun’s Theory of Expression.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. LXV (May 2003).

- Entries for “Anguier, François,” “Anguier, Michel,” “de’Rossi, Properzia,” “Sarrazin, Jacques,” and “François Girardon’s Apollo and the Nymphs of Thetis,” in the Encyclopedia of Sculpture (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2003).

- Entries on Guido Reni, Johannes Vermeer, and Jean-Antoine Watteau in Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution 1600-1720: An Interdiciplinary Biographical Dictionary, ed. Christopher Baker (Greenwood Press, 2002).

- “Embodying Ethos: Anguier, Poussin, and the Concept of Corporal Expression in the French Academy”

Ph. D. dissertation, University of Maryland at College Park, 1999 (Advisor: Prof. Anthony Colantuono).

- “Not Mere Child’s Play: Jacques Stella’s Jeux et plaisirs de l’enfance,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, CXXV (May-June 1995):303-312.

Other Art History Experience: prior to coming to UMM in 2000, I had temporary teaching positions at other excellent liberal arts colleges, such as Hollins University (Roanoke VA), Kenyon College (Gambier OH) and Loyola College in Maryland. During grad school I had two museum fellowships at the National Gallery of Art, where I assisted with research for exhibitions dealing with Old Master drawings, and Italian Baroque painting. I’ve also done contract work as a researcher for the Newseum (Arlington, VA).

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