William Armacost (2026) studies early modern European art produced in the colonial Atlantic, focusing on the integral relationship between visual representation and the administration of colonial rule. In particular, his interest in cartography and spatial planning examines how plantation colonies were developed, operated, and expanded, and how a set of diverse colonial subjects navigated these spaces. William’s research has examined microhistories relating to visual representations of the transatlantic slave trade in Dutch Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean, while additionally aiming to...
Grace Ann Arulanandam (2026) studies wax miniatures in Early Modern Italy, particularly Naples. Her research interests include the materiality of decorative arts and the macabre and the erotic. Grace Ann received her undergraduate degree in Art History and Italian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2024 and her master’s in the History of Art & Architecture from Boston University in 2026. Her previous research on erotic French poetry and embroidery in Salem, Massachusetts, was published in Athanor. She previously held internship positions researching historic textiles at...
Isabella Beroutsos (2025) studies photography and American art. Her research explores the relationship between photography and material culture from the nineteenth century to the present day, with specific interests in themes of time and scale in the American West. Thinking art historically across disciplines such as archaeology, literature, and psychology, recent projects have examined Gold Rush daguerreotype portraits with manual applications of gold, the photo-textile craft of military camouflage nets, documentation of contemporary Land art, and aerial imagery of ancient earthworks. She...
Lily Callender (2023) studies the complex decisions that went into the design and decoration of early Christian spaces, and the way that religious shifts and doctrinal disputes influenced the adaptation of art and architecture in Late Antiquity. She earned her B.A. in Art and History of Art from UC Berkeley in 2022, before working as an educator at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Her most recent research focuses on the complete sensorial experience of baptistries, and recovering how iconography, materiality, and ritual performance worked together to...
Isabel Ruiz Cano (2026) studies the role visual culture plays in forming and representing narratives around national identity under authoritarianism. Focusing specifically on cultural production in El Salvador between 1889 and 1979, she examines the relationship between modernism, modernity, and the legacies of colonialism. More broadly, her research aims to be in conversation with the influence of globalization upon the vernacular. Isabel is also interested in printmaking practices and alternative art circuits as sites of political resistance.
Ramón de Santiago researches the trans-Pacific transfer of visual and material culture between South Asia and Latin America in the Early Modern period, with a particular interest in pre-colonial systems of trade in both regions. His theoretical interests include questions of historiography in trans-oceanic systems and visual and material practices. His current project uses multidisciplinary methods to investigate the layers of exchange of objects, goods, and people through world oceanic systems.
Francisco del Rosario (2025) studies architecture, artifact, and image in the Philippines. His research builds on earlier work on the modernisms of print and painting, published in Impact, Southeast of Now, and Miradas. He holds an MA from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, including summer study at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a BFA from the University of the Philippines.
Elizabeth Fair (2019) studies cultural landscapes and ideas of heritage in California, especially in regard to transpacific migration, through evolving vernacular and institutional interpretations of art, architecture, and material culture. Her dissertation focuses on Chinese American architecture and architectural objects of the 19th and 20th centuries, and intersections with landscape, memory, and history, moving from Sacramento Valley 19th century temples to Angel Island to the San Francisco Chinatown YWCA. In 2024-5 she is a Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art,...
Bellara Huang (2025) studies artistic production in Soviet and post-Soviet time and space, with interest in the digital expressive modes of photography, video art, and new media. In particular, Bellara’s research examines the multiplicitous conditions that define(d) artmaking in Central Asia: from the collapsing sensorium of Soviet empire to the histories of representing nomadic indigeneity. Bellara received a BA in Art History and Computer Science from Swarthmore College and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art; before starting PhD studies, Bellara supported...
Hannah Jasper (2024) is a Ph.D. student in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies 20th-century American visual culture, focusing on visual serial print media and its relationship to US-based resistance movements. Her research examines the relationship between aesthetics, authorship, and collective production. She is interested in studying the evident and hidden forms of self-determination and cultural production within independent publications and mass media. She holds a BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. She previously served as...
