Graduate Students

Arvin Maghsoudlou is a doctoral candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in Art History at Southern Methodist University and a 2021-22 Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Arvin comes from Iran, where he received an undergraduate degree from the University of Tehran and a master's degree in Islamic Archaeology from the University of Mazandaran. He specializes in the art of late antique western Asia and the Iranian world, particularly during the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. With an emphasis on materiality and object agency, Arvin's dissertation investigates the transcultural reception of Sasanian silver vessels across Eurasia and their long-term impact on the aesthetic sensibilities of the later periods. Maghsoudlou's research has received multiple awards and recognitions, including the Fellowship in History of Art and Visual Culture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship at the National Museum of Asian Art, and the Alessandra Comini International Fellowship for Art History Studies.

Chloe Smith is a first year in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program in Art history. In 2020, she received a B.A. in art history and a B.A. in studio art with a concentration in Printmaking from Louisiana State University. As an Undergraduate her work was exhibited in It’s a Print Thing at Nichols College in 2021, Layers at LSU in 2022 and has her work presented at the LSU Discover Day in 2021 and 2022. Her current research interests include contemporary American printmaking within the sphere of contemporary Native American Artists.

Danielle Ezor is a doctoral candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history and studio art from Wellesley College and her M.A. in art history from the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. At Williams, Ezor worked in the Manton Study Center for Works on Paper at the Clark Art Institute and presented her master’s qualifying paper, “Women's Work: Jean Siméon Chardin’s Kitchen Maids.” She has also spent time as a research intern in the Art of Europe Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her dissertation, titled “Constructing Whiteness at the Dressing Table: Race, Gender, and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century France and the French Caribbean,” questions how eighteenth-century vanity items such as makeup boxes, perfume vials, etui kits, sugar pots, coffee, tea, and chocolate implements and their corresponding consumables—makeup, perfume, coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar—not only allow for but actively construct white femininity, often at the expense of forced black labor. Other interests include print culture, the art of the book, and queer theory. Email: dezor@smu.edu.

Darby Linn is a first-year student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program in art history. She received a B.A. in art history (summa cum laude) and a B.S. in strategic communications from the University of Colorado Boulder, with focuses in Nazi-era art theft recovery and restitution. For her undergraduate honors thesis in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Linn researched the missing paintings of a German Jewish family during the Second World War within the German State and Federal Archives in Berlin, Germany. She also worked for one year as a research assistant to the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. Her art historical interests include art law, looted and stolen artworks, provenance research, and restitution. 

Emma Woods is a first-year student in the art history’s RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program. She graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in religious studies and a minor in Jewish studies from Southern Methodist University in 2019. As an undergraduate, she had an internship at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum during their institutional transition and studied language in France, art history in Spain, and human rights in California. Her research concentrates on intersectional feminism in contemporary art with particular interest in domesticity and domiciles, collectives and collaboration, and nontraditional art media.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo: Gabriela Paiva de Toledo is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture at Southern Methodist University. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Campinas (Brazil), in History with an Art History minor, in 2015, and her Master of Arts degree in Art History from the same institution in 2017. Her current research focuses on the relations between ecology and Contemporary Art produced in and about Brazil. She is a member of the Curatorial Minds Lab, a project of the SMU Pollock Gallery and Hawn Gallery. She is currently (2021-2022) a curatorial fellow at The Warehouse, Dallas, assisting in the organization of the exhibition "Tender Objects: Emotion and Sensation after Minimalism," and acting as liaison between The Warehouse and the SMU art history department. Contact information: gpaivadetoledo@smu.edu.

Jean Marie Christensen is a doctoral candidate in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in history with an art history minor from Oklahoma State University in 2015 and her M.A. in European history from The University of Tulsa in 2017. Her research examines Tudor and Stuart portraiture through the theories of the king's two bodies and the body politic to analyze the construction of authority through the representation of the royal body. Her research also focuses on ideas of body image, family and dynasty, and the monarch’s place within court culture in early modern Britain. jchristensen@smu.edu

Jennifer Laffick is a third-year doctoral student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. program at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history with a minor in French from the University of Central Florida and her M. A. in the history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Laffick’s work focuses on French art produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, principally from 1780 to 1830. Specific research interests include representations of empire and imperial identity, issues of masculinity, the history of museums and collecting, and contemporary curatorial practice. In 2021, Laffick was the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Curatorial Summer Intern at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. She also has worked at the Norton Museum of Art as the curatorial assistant and has held internship positions at the Wallace Collection and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.

Kelsey Rozema is a PhD student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture Ph.D. Program in Art History. She received her masters in art history from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She is interested in the displays of both agency and oppression in eighteenth-century Spanish portraiture.

Laura Martin is a first-year student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program. She received her B.A. in history, with minors in art history and Spanish, from Baylor University in 2014. During her time as an undergraduate, she interned at the Meadows Museum and studied abroad in Spain. After graduating, Martin received her M.Ed. in history from Texas State University and taught 7th- and 8th-grade history for four years. Her current research interests include the intersections of gender, sexuality and religion in medieval and Early Modern Spain.

Lindsey Reynolds is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history at SMU. She received her B.A. in art history, with a certificate in museum studies, from The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 and her M.A. in art history from the University of Houston in 2021. Her M.A. thesis examined a selection of contemporary artists of Latin American and Middle Eastern descent who remediate archival resources in their work to recontextualize their national and cultural histories. Reynolds has held fellowship positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; and FotoFest, Houston. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked at the Texas Commission on the Arts as a program assistant. Her current research interests focus on modern and contemporary art from Latin America, the Middle East, and their diasporas, emphasizing its relationship to global art markets. 

Maria Bastos-Stanek graduated from Tufts University, where she earned her M.A. in the History of Art and Architecture, and from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned a B.A. in the History of Art and Architecture and double majored in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her Master's thesis, Indianismo Revisited: The Indigenous Figure in Brazilian Academic Painting, 1860-1930, looked at representations of Indigenous peoples in academic painting produced at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and their role in the production of a national imagery for the Empire of Brazil. During her undergraduate career, Maria concentrated on modern and contemporary art and wrote her senior honors thesis on the American artist David Wojnarowicz. She has held internships at the National Endowment for the Arts, Pace Gallery, and Voices in Contemporary Art. At SMU, Maria studies the art and visual culture of the Americas, with a particular focus on nineteenth century Brazil.

Arvid Nelsen is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture in Art History. He received his B.A. in Greek and Latin from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and M.A.s in classics and in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Nelsen is currently the rare books and manuscripts librarian at SMU’s Bridwell Library, having come to Dallas from the University of Minnesota, where he served as curator and archivist for the Charles Babbage Institute. He is a former E. Ph. Goldschmidt Fellow at Rare Book School and former section chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Nelsen is the author of “Race and Computing: The Problem of Sources, the Potential of Prosopography, and the Lesson of Ebony Magazine” (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v. 39, no. 1, Jan-Mar 2017) and “Concern for the ‘Disadvantaged’: ACM’s Role in Training and Education for Communities of Color (1958-1975)” (in Communities of Computing: Computer Science and Society in the ACM, New York: Morgan & Claypool, 2017). His interests include the intersection of art, technology, and society; global modernism; and modernism in print.

Sam Rushing: Sam Rushing is a first-year student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture M.A. program in art history. In 2021 he received a B.A. in art history with a minor in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. As an undergraduate, he interned at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. His B.A. thesis focused on Irish documentary photographer Richard Mosse and his work in the Congo as a critical self-examination of documentary photographic practice. His research interests include photography, art and politics, cross-cultural exchange and globalization, in modern and contemporary art.

Sophia Salinas is a Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture program in art history. She received her B.A. in art history and B.B.A. in general business from SMU. During her senior year she served as the AAMD Undergraduate Intern in Museum Education at the Meadows Museum. Her senior honors thesis “Cyber Touch: The Body and Transgression in Cyberfeminist Art Practices” examined feminist theories of embodiment and technology in relation to cyberfeminist digital interactive art. She currently pursues her curatorial interests in the Curatorial Minds Lab cohort, hosted by the Hawn Gallery and the Pollock Gallery. The experimental curatorial cohort hosts virtual lectures with international curators, controls the Curatorial Minds Lab exhibition at the Hawn Gallery, and contributes to the zine Dialogos.  Her research interests include modern and contemporary art with attention to themes of gender, race, and embodiment, as well as new media art.