Alumni

SMU Art History majors, M.A.’s, and Ph.D.’s go on to continue with their studies in advanced graduate programs, as well as into paid positions at museums, galleries and in the private sector. Recent graduate alumni include:

Ph.D. PROGRAM ALUMNI

Jean Christensen (Ph.D. 2026), dissertation: Bodies of the Crown: Kinship, Health, and the Construction of the Royal Body in Early Modern English Portraiture.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo (Ph.D. 2026), dissertation: Contested Conquest: Art and the Amazon under Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985). Dr. Paiva de Toledo is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil.

Arvin Maghsoudlou (Ph.D. 2025), dissertation: Delights of the Cup: Materiality, Function, and Reception of Late Antique Iranian Silver Vessels. Dr. Maghsoudlou is the Gramian-Emrani Family Curatorial Fellow at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Dani Ezor (Ph.D. 2023), dissertation: Whiteness at the Dressing Table: Race, Gender, and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century France and the French Caribbean. Dr. Ezor is Assistant Professor of Global Early Modern Art at State University of New York, New Paltz.

Danya Epstein (Ph.D. 2022), dissertation: Archival Ruins: Dennis Numkena and Neo-Anasazi Futures. Dr. Epstein is Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Art at Arizona State University.

Alice Heeren (PhD. 2022), dissertation: The Art of the Present in the Country of the Future: Remediations of Brasília in Contemporary Art. Dr. Heeren is Assistant Professor of Art at Lafayette College, Easton, PA.

Claudia Zapata (Ph.D. 2022), dissertation: Chicano Art is Not Dead: The Politics of Curating Chicano Art in Major U.S. Exhibitions, 2008-2012. Dr. Zapata is Associate Curator of Latino Art at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin.

Asiel Sepulveda (Ph.D. 2021), dissertation: Havana Impressions: Print Culture and Global Modernity in Plantation Cuba (1790-1860). Dr. Sepulveda is Assistant Professor in the Division of Arts and Humanities at Babson College, Massachusetts.

Lauren Richman (Ph.D. 2019), dissertation:"Silent Salesmen," Skeptical Consumers: American Images in a Divided Berlin, 1949-67. Dr. Richman is William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography at the Norton Museum of Art, Florida. 

Mariana Hartenthal (Ph.D. 2017), dissertation:Laboring Faces: Railway Portraiture and the Human Geographies of Amazonia, 1907-2017. Dr. Hartenthal is an independent artist, art historian and curator. 

Joseph Hartman (Ph.D. 2016), dissertation: Modern dreams: building Machado's Cuba, 1925-1933. Dr. Hartman is Associate Professor, Art and Art History and Latinx and Latin American Studies, University of Missouri-Kansas City.

M.A. PROGRAM ALUMNI

Bradley Petty (M.A. 2026), thesis:The Southwest Black Art Collective: Afro-Modern Ecology, Kinship and Collectivity in the Desert Southwest. Pettyis a Ph.D. student in Art History at SMU.

Emmerson Stephens (M.A. 2026), thesis: Clothing, Comportment, and Courtly Femininity in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Portraits of Elite Florentine Women (c. 1475-1490).

Libby Bush (M.A. 2025), thesis:Worship Through Miniature Gesture: The Tell Asmar Hoard as Ritual Role Models. Bush is Programs Manager at Business Council for the Arts.

Natalia Lopez (M.A. 2025), thesis:The Seeming Beginning: The Drawings of Dorothy Hood, 1942-1986. Lopez is collections manager at a private art collection in Dallas.

Lin Zhang (M.A. 2025), thesis: Kinship, Memory, and Migration in the Work of Zhang Xiaogang, Feng Mengbo, and Kurt Tong.

Rebecca Kendall (M.A. 2024), thesis: From the Alhambra to the Grammar of Ornament: Materiality and Process in the Work of Owen Jones.

Chloe Smith (M.A. 2024), thesis: The Layers of a Mixture of Prints Representing the Events that Happened in 1713: Trompe-l'oeil, the Paris Print Market, and the War of the Spanish Succession.

Emma Woods, (M.A. 2024), thesis: Text and Commentary: Jewish Identity in Beryl Korot's Video Art. Woods is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at SMU.

Laura Martin (M.A. 2023), thesis:The Art of Patron Sainthood: St. Teresa, Santiago, and the Early Modern Spanish Empire. Martin is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at SMU.

Samuel Rushing (M.A. 2023), thesis: A Historic Supernova: The Paintings of Fernando de Szyszlo, 1959 to 1973. Rushing is a Ph.D. Student in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Darby Linn Wilson (M.A. 2023), thesis:Building the Egyptian Canon in Early 20th-century Germany: The Case Study of Georg Steindorff’s Excavations. Darby Wilson, J.D., completed her Doctor of Law at the University of Houston in 2026.

Sydney Fitzgibbon (M.A. 2022), thesis:Living in a Material World: The Petite Singerie of Eighteenth-Century Chantilly. Fitzgibbon is Library Technician and Collections Management Assistant in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives' Special Collections, Washington.

Brigid Powers (M.A. 2022), thesis: Es la Rosa, El Símbolo Más Proprio de La Pureza’ (The rose is the most appropriate symbol of purity) An analysis of an 18th-Century Document Reflecting Female Monasticism in Mallorca. Powers is Philanthropy Coordinator at Sacramento Region Community Foundation.

Alexandra Stern (M.A. 2022), thesis: Redressing the Body: Subjectification through Doll-Making at the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945. Stern is Collections Specialist at Poster House, New York.

Ana Norman (M.A. 2021), thesis: Miming Modernity: Representations of Pierrot in Fin-de-Siècle France. Norman is a contemporary jewelry artist and the founder of the jewelry brand Lucky Banana Nugget.

Danielle Pigeon (M.A. 2021), thesis: As Above, So Below: Italian Amuletic Practices Following the Black Death. Pigeon is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Bryn Mawr College.

Laura Varela Mejia (M.A. 2021), thesis: Colonialism, Cohabitation, and Charismatic Llamas: Representations of Animals in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Varela Mejia is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Studies at Emory University.

Madison Whitaker (M.A. 2021), thesis: Care, Collectivity, and Disabled Futurity. Whitaker is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Xena Fitzgerald (M.A. 2020), thesis: Painting and Performing the Past: Representation of a Historical Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Peru. Fitzgerald is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History and Latin American Studies at Tulane University.

Adrian Ogas (M.A. 2020), thesis:International Resonance in the Artwork and Writing of Jiro Takamatsu. Ogas is an independent designer, illustrator and art historian.

April Riddle (M.A. 2020), thesis:The Exchange Happens Here: Net Art's Alternative Currencies. Riddleis a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History of Art at Ohio State University.

Alexandra Perez (M.A. 2019), thesis:Traces of Identity: Portraiture in the Work of Teresa Margolles. Perez is Registrar and Exhibition Manager at the Rubell Museum, Miami.

Jennifer Smart (M.A., 2019), thesis:Always In-Formation: The Presence of Sound in the Work of Dan Graham. Smart is a Ph.D. candidate in Screen Cultures at Northwestern University.

Jillianne Laceste (M.A., 2018), thesis:Making Sense of Music in Early Modern Self-Portraiture. Dr. Laceste received a Ph.D. in History of Art & Architecture at Boston University in 2025 and is now a Lecturer in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University.

Delanie Linden (M.A., 2018), thesis:Silver, Flesh, & Holy Water: Colonial Conversions in the French Enlightenment. Dr. Linden was awarded a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2025 and is the Anne Rothenberg Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow in Visual Culture at CalTech.

Carol Pino (M.A., 2018), thesis: Decoding Roberto Burle Marx’s Lapa Drawings Through the Grid. Pino is Director of Business Development for the art storage company UOVO.

SMU Art History alumni who would like their news added to this page please email annalovatt@smu.edu.

IN MEMORIAM

Kelsey Rozema

Kelsey Rozema was a Ph.D. student in the art history program at SMU. Originally from the Chicago area, she received her M.A. in art history from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and was writing a dissertation on 17th-century portraiture of little people at royal and viceregal courts around the Hispanic world with Dr. Adam Jasienski. While at SMU she interned at the Dallas Museum of Art, working on projects related to disability and accessibility. She passed away on August 13, 2025, while in the last year of her doctorate. She was a bright light to everyone who was lucky to know her.