Jennifer Van Horn

Professor Jennifer Van Horn is a scholar of 18th- and 19th-century art, material culture, and early United States history, holding a joint appointment in Art History and History at the University of Delaware. She serves as Director of Graduate Studies in Art History and President of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA). Her research focuses on intersections of art, materiality, and marginalized histories, particularly enslavement, disability, and sensory experiences. Van Horn earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and has held fellowships at major institutions like the National Gallery of Art and Winterthur Museum.

Her book *Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery* (2022) examines enslaved African Americans' uses of portraiture for resistance, while *The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America* (2017) explores how material culture shaped early American identity. Awards include the National Portrait Gallery’s Director’s Essay Prize (2019) and fellowships from the NEH and Winterthur.

Her current projects include studies of disability and making, and co-editing volumes on iconoclasm and the disabled gaze. Van Horn’s teaching emphasizes reparative methodologies and the material legacies of enslavement, blending interdisciplinary approaches to recover overlooked narratives in art history.