INSTITUTE FOR DOCTORAL STUDIES
IN THE VISUAL ARTS
Stanley Bermudez (PhD Candidate) Presentation: "Subversive Secrets of Dissent: All the Conspirators Conspiring in Secret and Secretly Germinating," for the panel From Propaganda to Activism: Politics in Modern and Contemporary Art, at the annual SECAC Conference in Cincinnati, OH, October 22-25, 2025.
Lanette Blankenship (Cohort ’25) Presentation: “What Does It Mean to Be an American in the 21st Century?” for the panel Visions and Collisions of War: Art, Architecture, and Armed Conflict at the annual SECAC Conference, October 22-25, 2025.
Elliot Bowers (Cohort ’21) Co-presentation with Mikayla Novak, (Mercatus Center at George Mason University) “Transphobia as a Perverse Emergent Phenomenon” for the panel Rainbow Liberty: Topics in LGBTQ+ Mainline Economics, at Southern Economic Association (SEA) 95th Annual Conference in Tampa, FL, November 25, 2025.
Crystal Ann Brown (Cohort ’23) Presentation: “Lilith: How Can the Speculative Science Fiction of Octavia Butler Impact our Understanding of Mothering” for the panel Feminist Art Practices and Theories in Contemporary Contexts at the SECAC conference, October 24, 2025. Crystal will also be chairing a two-section panel, Exploring the Intersection of Storytelling and Visual Art.
Kylie Ellis Cariddi (PhD Candidate) Presentation: “Envisioning the Macroalgal with Adrian Ghenie” which considers virtual/analog entanglement through a transhistorical lens at the PACT Conference (Pacific Association for Continental Thought), on September 25, 2025.
Lucas Alan Dietsche (Cohort ’23) Presentation: "Between and Things and Non-Things: Martin Heidegger and Byung Chul Han on Poetry" for the panel Heidegger and Poetry – Heidegger und die Dichtung at the European Center for Heideggerian Studies conference, September 26-28, 2025. He will also present the paper "Resisting Carceralizing (s)places through the Prisoner Zines: The Signification, index, and shifting through Adorno, Piepmeier, and Krauss" at the annual SECAC Conference, October 22-25, 2025. Additionally, he will be presenting Against the Hegemony of Law: Poetic Inquiry Criminology, Anaximander's Apeiron, and the (De)(s)placement of Criminal Justice at the annual American Criminology Society Conference in Washington DC, November 12-15, 2025.
Justin Gallant (Cohort ’24) Presentation: “Post-Reality and the Flux of Temporal Fantasms” for the panel on creativity, time, and technology at SECAC on October 21, 2025.
Sammetria Goodson (Cohort ’25) Presentation: “Fair Use & Visual Art” regarding the fair use doctrine and how this doctrine applies to the visual arts for the 2025 ASA (American Society of Appraisers) International Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 20, 2025.
Kathryn Jones (PhD Candidate) Presentation: “On the Fragmented Survival of Hegemonic Fantasms,” in Art and Art History as Modes of Flow: Beyond Linear and Network Models of Artistic Relation and Transformation, Session II; chaired by Jason Hoelscher, at SECAC, October 22-25, 2025.
Marvin Milian (PhD Candidate) Presentation: "The Art of the Proletariat and the Role of Autonomy in Today's Political World" for the panel Artivism: A Visual Language of Change at SECAC, October 25, 2025. He is presenting "Voices: The Polyphonic Visual Concert in the Street" for Painting the Town: A Conference on the Philosophy of Street Art, at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. October 9, 2025.
Alaina Plowdrey Forehand (PhD Candidate) will co-present “Three Dialogues: Multi-Modal Approaches to Generative AI in Contemporary Art Practice” for the session Balancing Innovation and Tradition: Adapting Coursework in the Wake of AI, at the annual SECAC conference, October 24, 2025.
Tory Schendel-Vyvoda (Cohort '23) Presentation: "How Medieval-ism Are They Really? Examining Feminist Spirituality Through Visual Aids" for the panel Studio and Art History > Mega Fans and Myth Busters: Creating Pathways from Popular Visual Culture to the Past in the Art/History Classroom, Session I at the SECAC conference from October 22-25, 2025.
Alicia Thompson (PhD Candidate) Presentation: "Violence, Addiction, Beauty, and Transmutation Through the Works of Nick Cave and Doris Salcedo" for the panel Artivism: A Visual Language of Change at the SECAC Conference on October 25, 2025.
Jessica Wagner (PhD Candidate) will present the paper “Freedom From Chains: Chiara Fumai and the Ghost of Harry Houdini” for the session, Studio Art < the "F" Words: Fear | Fail | Flux | Flow at the SECAC Annual Conference, October, 24, 2025.
Althea Wiggs (Cohort ’23) Presentation: "Propped With a Spoon: Rupture in the Penumbra" for the session Interdisciplinary > Artivism: A Visual Language of Change at SECAC, October 22 -25, 2025.
Nandita Baxi Sheth (PhD 2025) Presentation “Pedagogical Possibilities of Multispecies Aesthetics” in Art and Art History as Modes of Flow: Beyond Linear and Network Models of Artistic Relation and Transformation, Session I; chaired by Jason Hoelscher, at SECAC, October 23, 2025.
Jean Bundy (PhD 2017) Presentation: “Communicating Triptychs: Kentridge, Bosch & Beckmann” for the panel Re-Imagining the Global South: Art, Gender and Identity at the 57th Annual International Congress, October 27-30, 2025. *Dr. Jean Bundy is Editor of the AICA/e-mag and Chair of the AICA-International Incentive Prize for Art Critics.
Katherine P. Farrington (PhD 2022) Presentation: “The Plant Contingent Presents: Ecstatic Repair Under the Winter Skies,” with Samantha Jones (PhD 2024) for the panel Synergetics in Community Practice at SECAC, October 22 -25, 2025.
Jason Hoelscher (PhD 2018) Chair: a two-session panel titled Art and Art History as Modes of Flow: Beyond Linear and Network Models of Artistic Relation and Transformation, and presenting a paper titled "Art is the Butterfly Effect of Itself: Retronymic Recoding and Aesthetic Efflorescence," at SECAC, October 23, 2025.
Jocelyn Holmes (PhD 2025) Presentation "Artistic Gestures and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning" for the panel Matter in Flux: The Intra-Action in Art at the SECAC conference on Oct 23, 2025.
Samantha Jones (PhD 2024) Presentation: “The Plant Contingent Presents: Ecstatic Repair Under the Winter Skies,” with Katherine P Farrington (PhD 2022) for the panel Synergetics in Community Practice at SECAC, October 22 -25, 2025.
Paige Lunde (PhD 2025) Presentation: “Double-Voicedness as Alternative Flow in the Artist’s Work” in Art and Art History as Modes of Flow: Beyond Linear and Network Models of Artistic Relation and Transformation, Session 2; chaired by Jason Hoelscher, at SECAC, October 23, 2025.
Maggie M. McKee (PhD 2025) Presentation: “Attentive Storylines: the Intimacy of Ontological Encounters” for the panel Exploring the intersection of storytelling and visual art at SECAC from October 22-25, 2025. She will also present “Relational Attentiveness: Intimate Listening and Dialogical Engagement” for the panel Conceptions of Nature from Ionian Thought to Contemporary Science at the XVI International Ontology Congress in San Sebastián, Spain on October 7-10, 2025 and Saint Jean de Luz, France on October 11, 2025.
Jessica Rodríguez-Colón (Jeca) (PhD 2022) Presentation: “The Gaze Economy of Pregnancy and Birth of (M)others in US American Film" for the panel The Visual Culture of Birth in America at SECAC, October 25, 2025.
Angela Whitlock (PhD 2024) Panel Chair for Synergetics in Community Practice and presenting a paper titled "Techno and Synergetics" at the annual SECAC Conference, October 22-25, 2025.
