Elizabeth C Childs
Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History; Professor of French (Courtesy Affiliation); Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (Courtesy Affiliation)
- Email: ecchilds@nospam.wustl.edu
My work (both research and teaching) engages with intersections of visual arts, particularly modern European art, with colonialism and imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I examine the ways in which cross cultural encounters impact representation, taking into consideration Euro-American artists’ constructions and representations of race, gender, and cultural and national identities. I am interested in the impact of European exploration, ethnography, anthropology, science, and colonization on the formulation of ideas of the non-European world, particularly in the Global South (Polynesia in particular).My current work on the art of French symbolist Paul Gauguin (a figure I have long studied) considers how his work was received in the 20th century in Europe and America and how it was strategically positioned by the government to help justify France’s colonialist project; I am also researching contemporary artist’s reception and critique of this aspect of his work (a key example is the queer Samoan artist Yuki Kihara, on whom I have published). I am this year on sabbatical working on a book tentatively entitled “The Gauguin Effect,” under advance contrast for Yale U Press. I have also recently begun to teach Native American art, a long time interest, and envision some future research engagement with contemporary Native American topics, particularly as Native artists engage with Mississippian and other local STL Native histories.