Graduate Students

Ana Girard is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture program at SMU. She received her M.A. in Art History from the University of Houston. She graduated with honors and double majored in Art History and Spanish at the University of Houston. Girard has held the Samuel H. Kress post-graduate interpretive fellowship and two curatorial fellowships at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Menil Collection. She has also served as a short-term research assistant to past mentors and private collectors. Girard’s primary research focus is the visual and material culture of the Early Modern Hispanic World, particularly emphasizing transatlantic histories, religious art and indigenous participation in the global Renaissance-Baroque. Girard is interested in intersections between European, Viceregal, and pre-Hispanic artisanship and worldmaking. She is passionate about artworks and artifacts that have traveled across cultural, aesthetic and religious boundaries.

Arvin Maghsoudlou is a doctoral candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in Art History at SMU and a 2021-22 Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maghsoudlou comes from Iran, where he received an undergraduate degree from the University of Tehran and a master's degree in Islamic Archaeology from the University of Mazandaran. He specializes in the art of late antique western Asia and the Iranian world, particularly during the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. With an emphasis on materiality and object agency, Maghsoudlou's dissertation investigates the transcultural reception of Sasanian silver vessels across Eurasia and their long-term impact on the aesthetic sensibilities of the later periods. Maghsoudlou's research has received multiple awards and recognitions, including the Fellowship in History of Art and Visual Culture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship at the National Museum of Asian Art, and the Alessandra Comini International Fellowship for Art History Studies.

Bradley Petty is a first-year M.A. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program. He earned a BBA from Texas Christian University in 2008, with a minor in History. His academic focus is on Black Contemporary Art of the North American Southwest. A former Field Artillery Officer in the United States Army, Petty is also an avid art collector, with a diverse collection ranging from ceramics to drawings.

Christine Burger is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history from University of Zurich in Switzerland and her M.A. in both Arts and Culture and Media Studies from Leiden University.

Before coming to SMU, Burger worked for eight years in museums in Switzerland and in Texas. She was an Assistant Curator at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, where she worked on exhibitions such Jean Dubuffet. Metamorphoses of Landscape (2015), Balthus (2018), and The Young Picasso. Blue and Rose Period (2019). Most recently, she was the Curatorial Research Assistant for European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), where she supported the Senior Curator of European Art with Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris (2021) and Van Gogh and the Olive Groves (2021). She also curated the exhibition Picassos Muses: Between Inspiration and Obsession (2023) at the DMA. Additionally, Burger also works on independent curatorial projects and is a co-founder of the Basel-based networking group for female-identifying art workers FAM. She has been published in exhibition catalogues on Jean Dubuffet, Balthus, Picasso and Juan Gris.

In her research, Burger is interested in a global approach to modern and contemporary art, the archive, as well as death and mourning.

Daniel Heberle is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. Heberle received his B.A. in art history from the University of Rochester in New York. He is interested in 16th- and 17th-century Spanish art, both religious and secular. His work focuses in particular on early modern art theory, practices of artistic workshops, and authorship.

Emma Woods is a first-year student in the art history’s RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program. She graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in religious studies and a minor in Jewish studies from SMU in 2019. As an undergraduate, she had an internship at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum during their institutional transition and studied language in France, art history in Spain, and human rights in California. Her research concentrates on intersectional feminism in contemporary art with particular interest in domesticity and domiciles, collectives and collaboration, and nontraditional art media.

Emmerson Stephens is a first-year M.A. student in the Art History department at SMU, specializing in the intersection of Italian Renaissance portraiture and ballet. She graduated summa cum laude in 2024 with a B.A. in Art History and a B.F.A. in Dance Performance from SMU. During her time as an undergraduate, she interned at the Meadows Museum for art education, where she contributed to educational programming aimed at making art accessible to diverse audiences. Her current research interests focus on how the artistic representation of ballet in portraiture reflects cultural values and influences in Renaissance Italy.

Erin Wilson is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her M.A. in art history from the University of South Florida and her B.S. in arts administration from the University of Tampa. In her master’s thesis, An Alternative Ancien Régime? Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in Russia, Wilson examined the artist’s professional experiences as a French émigré. An article based on this research titled “Drafting an Image of Success: The Russian Patronage of Émigré Élisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun” is forthcoming.

Recently, Wilson served as Associate Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL. While there she developed numerous exhibitions, including Explore the Vaults: Images Private and Public, c. 1500-1800 (2022-2023) and Defining Lines, the Prints and Drawings of Maxime Lalanne (2022). Her research interests remain centered on French painting of the long eighteenth century.

Ester Ippolito Harrison is a first year Ph.D. Meadows Doctoral Fellow in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in Art History at SMU's Meadows School of the Arts. She holds an M.Phil. in the History and Philosophy of Art from the University of Kent at Canterbury and B.A. in Art History with concentrations in Italian and Printmaking from the University of Dallas. Harrison is an art historian and social impact leader with over a decade of experience both in the nonprofit sector and in art, museum and culture institutions. She has served as a panelist for several conferences, including presenting symposiums of her research. She is currently an Adjunct Arts & Humanities Professor at Dallas College. She is a Board member for Texas Vignette, a nonprofit with the mission to promote, support and connect women in the arts in Texas. Harrison spent several years working in Europe at various cultural institutions including The Oskar Schlemmer Theatre Estate, the Canterbury City Council Museum and Berlin Art Link. She has also held roles at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, National Park Service, Craighead Green Gallery and the Texas Women's Caucus for Art. Harrison has a passion for cultural history, research and creative problem-solving to increase public interest in and community support for historical and cultural assets. Her focus is on the intersection of public art and communities in Latin America.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture at SMU. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Campinas (Brazil), in History with an Art History minor, in 2015, and her Master of Arts degree in Art History from the same institution in 2017. Her current research focuses on the relations between ecology and Contemporary Art produced in and about Brazil. She is a member of the Curatorial Minds Lab, a project of the SMU Pollock Gallery and Hawn Gallery. She is currently (2021-2022) a curatorial fellow at The Warehouse, Dallas, assisting in the organization of the exhibition "Tender Objects: Emotion and Sensation after Minimalism," and acting as liaison between The Warehouse and the SMU art history department. Contact information: gpaivadetoledo@smu.edu.

Jean Marie Christensen is a doctoral candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in history with an art history minor from Oklahoma State University in 2015 and her M.A. in European history from The University of Tulsa in 2017. Her research examines Tudor and Stuart portraiture through the theories of the king's two bodies and the body politic to analyze the construction of authority through the representation of the royal body. Her research also focuses on ideas of body image, family and dynasty, and the monarch’s place within court culture in early modern Britain. jchristensen@smu.edu

Jennifer Laffick is a Ph.D. candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture program. She received her M.A. in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her B.A. in Art History from the University of Central Florida. Laffick’s research focuses on French art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (roughly 1780 to 1830). In particular, her work interrogates how art intersects with transatlantic imperial politics during this period. Laffick is also interested in curatorial work and has worked at several museums including the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D. C.), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL) and the Wallace Collection (London). Email: jlaffick@smu.edu

Kelsey Rozema is a PhD student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. Program in Art History. She received her masters in art history from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She is interested in the displays of both agency and oppression in eighteenth-century Spanish portraiture.

Laura Martin is a Ph.D. student in Art History at SMU, studying the art of the early modern Hispanic world. She received her master’s degree in art history at SMU in 2023, and before that worked as a secondary history teacher. Martin's research interests center on religious art in Spain and Latin America. Her research explores how religious images served as conduits for the divine, taking seriously their power within the early modern imaginary. Her work also investigates how early modern conceptions of gender-impacted faith and how those ideas translated into visual rhetoric.

Libby Bush is a first-year M.A. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program. She received her B.A. from Baylor University with honors in 2023. She recently completed an undergraduate thesis discussing religious imagery in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Early Christianity. During her time as an undergraduate, she interned at the Nasher Sculpture Center and Laura Rathe Fine Art in the Dallas Design District. Her current research interests include religion and cultural exchange in the Ancient Near East. 

Lin Zhang is a first-year M.A. student in the Art History program. She received her B.A. in Fine Art from Hubei Minzu University in 2014 and her first M.A. in Art History from the University of Sussex in 2021. Zhang’s M.A. thesis focused on the relationship between documentary photography and power and its political ideology expression through the lens. Her current research concentrates on Asia contemporary art, particularly the relationship between archival art, family albums, individual and collective memory, and identity.

Lindsey Reynolds is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history, with a certificate in museum studies, from The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 and her M.A. in art history from the University of Houston in 2021. Her M.A. thesis examined a selection of contemporary artists of Latin American and Middle Eastern descent who remediate archival resources in their work to recontextualize their national and cultural histories. Reynolds has held fellowship positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; and FotoFest, Houston. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked at the Texas Commission on the Arts as a program assistant. Her current research interests focus on modern and contemporary art from Latin America, the Middle East, and their diasporas, emphasizing its relationship to global art markets. 

Maria Bastos-Stanek is a Ph.D. student of Latin American art. Bastos-Stanek earned her B.A. in the history of art and architecture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and M.A. in the history of art and architecture from Tufts University. She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brazilian art and visual culture. Her research focuses on the connections between art and the history of science and technology, the culture of war, and political and economic philosophy.

Natalia Lopez is an M.A. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program. She received her B.S. in Integrative Studies from the University of North Texas, focusing on topics in sociology, art history and communications. Her research interests include the visual culture in Latin America during the twentieth century. 

Arvid Nelsen is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture in Art History. He received his B.A. in Greek and Latin from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and M.A.s in classics and in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nelsen is the Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts at SMU’s Bridwell Library and former Curator and Archivist of the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of “Race and Computing: The Problem of Sources, the Potential of Prosopography, and the Lesson of Ebony Magazine” (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v. 39, no. 1, Jan-Mar 2017). His interests include minimalism, abstraction and conceptual art. He plans to focus on the deployment of traditional printing methods in modern and contemporary art.

Rebecca Dunnegan is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history fromColgate University. A former intern in Education at the Kimbell Art Museum in 2017,she is glad to return to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.Before beginning graduate study at SMU, Dunnegan worked as a Curatorial Assistantat The Frick Collection in New York. While there, she undertook research on a widerange of subjects in European art history. She is interested in late eighteenth-through early nineteenth-century French art, particularly painting, porcelain, andother decorative arts. She plans to focus on political transitions and representationsof imperial power

Shelley DeMaria is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her M.A. in art history from Hunter College, CUNY and her B.A. in both art history and Spanish from SMU. Prior to doctoral study, DeMaria worked in the curatorial departments of various museums. She was the curatorial assistant at SMU’s Meadows Museum from 2011 to 2021, and has also held curatorial research appointments at Dallas Museum of Art (2021); Heckscher Museum of Art (2021); and Bruce Museum (2022–2023). DeMaria’s research interests include land-based art and art practices, with an ecological focus on artists whose work explores the interconnection of nature and society.

Sophia Salinas (she/her) is an art history Ph.D. student in SMU’s RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program. She received her B.A. in art history and B.B.A. in general business from SMU. Her senior honors thesis, Cyber Touch: The Body and Transgression in Cyberfeminist Art Practices, examines feminist theories of embodiment and technology in relation to the digital interactive art of VNS Matrix, Prema Murthy, Linda Dement, and Shu Lea Cheang, arguing that Cyberfeminist art advanced the concept of “cyber touch” or touch which transcends the digital barrier. Her research interests include feminist and queer art, digital and time-based media art, and transnational artists.

Salinas is the curator of On—n—On: Ciara Elle Bryant in Conversation with Octavia Butler (2022). During her senior year she served as the 2020-2021 AAMD Undergraduate Intern in Museum Education at the Meadows Museum. In 2023, Salinas served as a Havner Curatorial Intern for the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, working with both the Arts Management Department and the Contemporary Curatorial team to facilitate the conservation, loan and display of the permanent collection. Since 2022, Salinas has served as an Exhibition Intern at The Warehouse in Dallas, TX, assisting in the research and didactics for For What It’s Worth: Value Systems in Art since 1960 (February 2 - June 29, 2024).