معرفی
Erin Pauwels, PhD is an Associate Professor of Art History and Undergraduate Advisor at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. During the 2024-25 academic year, she is on leave to serve as the Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art in the Department of History of Art at the University of Oxford.
- PhD, Art History and American Studies, Indiana University
- MA, Humanities and Social Thought, New York University
- BA, Art History, Carleton College
Dr. Pauwels is a historian of modern and contemporary art in the Americas with special interest in photography, Indigenous Studies, and ecocritical approaches to visual culture. Her research explores the politics of portraiture and placemaking, technologies of image dissemination, and intersections between theater and the visual arts.
Her groundbreaking book, Napoleon Sarony's Living Pictures: The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York (2024), reconstructs the legacy of a once-famous nineteenth-century photographer to reveal how the emergence of mass media reshaped definitions of artistic authorship. Her scholarly work spans diverse topics including Native resistance through photography, theatrical elements in photographic portraiture, and the evolution of photographic truth claims in digital contexts.
Dr. Pauwels's research demonstrates consistent engagement with both historical and contemporary visual culture, revealing patterns in how images shape identity, power structures, and cultural memory across time periods. Her publications in journals like American Art, Panorama, and History & Technology show particular interest in the intersections between artistic practice, technological innovation, and social context.
- Terra Foundation for American Art
- Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery
- American Council of Learned Societies
- Wyeth Foundation for American Art
- Houghton Library of Harvard University
As an educator, Dr. Pauwels will be accepting PhD students for the 2025-26 academic year. Her professional affiliations include the Association of Historians of American Art, the Photography Network, and the Print Council of America (where she was recently elected). Her academic trajectory reflects deep commitment to interdisciplinary approaches that bridge art historical methods with critical frameworks from Indigenous studies, media theory, and cultural studies.
