Saif Radi studies modern and contemporary art of the Arab world. His research interests include the visual articulations of gender and sexuality, national and transnational identities, and architecture and urbanism. Saif received his BA in Art History and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018, and previously worked at the Hammer Museum and Frieze Los Angeles art fair.
Krishna Shekhawat (2022) studies art history at the intersection of landscapes and water architecture in early modern Thar Desert, India- video link. The research builds on her tenure as Assistant Curator at Mehrangarh Fort Museum and undergraduate innovation project at Miranda House, University of Delhi. She is keen to engage sky, surface and subterranean as her visual archive. A member of the Association of Art Museum Curators, New York, she was also a fellow at their Professional Alliance for...
Zachary Smithline (2022) studies the art and thought of medieval Europe, particularly as they illuminate the general nature of depiction; and the history of art history, especially as it intersects with the history of science and the history of philosophical aesthetics.
Two ongoing projects explore these interests. The first applies 3D visualization techniques to a Gothic sculptural program, the Princes’ Portal and Rider of Bamberg Cathedral, which responds in subtle ways to changes in standpoint and lighting. Part modern experiment and part medieval experimentum (often...
Joel Thielen studies visual cultures of Japan from an ecocritical perspective. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Colorado College and spent three years working in Japan before joining the Berkeley History of Art Department in 2016. Joel’s interests lie in the emerging field of eco art history; he utilizes environmental histories, ecology, and geography to explore the relationships between our natural environments—including human-made “natural” environments—and the visual cultures of Japan during the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods. Most recently he is...
Kimberly Yu studies contemporary art with a focus on how new media visualize conditions of capitalism and geopolitical struggles across East Asia and North America. Her current research examines the works of artists responding to demilitarized environments uniquely situated in the transpacific where different governments, cultures, and species intersect. Yu graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018 with degrees in art history and English. She has held positions at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, the Hood Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, Talley...