Active, demanding faculty

The art history faculty are active researchers who believe in the importance of student responsibility. Art history majors will be challenged to build intellectual muscles in  classrooms led by professionals who are up-to-date in their knowledge and pedagogies.

Kirstin Ringelberg, associate professor, specializes in modern and contemporary art and visual culture. Ringelberg recently published Redefining Gender in American Impressionist Studio Painting: Work Place/Domestic Space, and has authored numerous essays on topics ranging from the representation of 19th-century women artists studios, the influence of contemporary art in popular culture, to the tension between beauty and criticality. She has also presented nationally and internationally on how contemporary Japanese artists represent pain and cuteness. In 2008, Ringelberg received the Elon College Excellence in Teaching Award.

Evan A. Gatti, assistant professor, specializes in ancient and medieval art. She has published essays on the art and culture of medieval bishops, edited a special issue of Peregrinations on Ottonian Art, and presented papers nationally and internationally on the relationships between ritual, performance, pilgrimage and art in a religious context. In May 2009, Gatti received the Elon College Excellence in Service/Leadership award.

Richard Liebhart, adjunct professor, has been a lecturer on archeology and ancient art in the Classics Department and the Art Department at Chapel Hill since 1990. He spent 3 years (1980-1983) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and worked on excavations in the Athenian Agora and at ancient Corinth. In 1990, he began in Turkey on an architectural study of the tomb chamber of Tumulus MM at Gordion, the capital of King Midas and the Phrygians. This project has evolved to include on-going structural and environmental conservation for the 2,700-year-old tomb, the oldest standing wooden building in the world. 

Robert Mayhew, adjunct instructor, studies the visual and material culture of Early Modern Europe. He has lectured in the United States and in Europe on the effect of social currencies, legal traditions, and economic change on the production and marketing of artworks in the sixteenth century. He was awarded a Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Antwerp, Belgium where he was associated with the University of Antwerp and was an exchange fellow at the Institute de Récherches Historiques du Septentrion (IRHiS) at the University Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3. 

Vanessa Schulman, adjunct professor, received her PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine, in 2010. She specializes in 19th and 20th century art and visual culture of the United States. Her work examines how artists depicted technology and labor in 19th-century America. She has previously taught at UCI, Harvard University, and Wheelock College.