Student Affiliates of the Visual Culture Center

There are many students, past and present, who work in visual culture-related areas at UW-Madison. This is an in-progress list of their work and accomplishments. For more information on studying visual culture at UW, see our curriculum and course pages and take a look at the Visual Culture Focus Group.

Esra Alagoz, Curriculum & Instruction

Megan Sapnar Ankerson, Communication Arts, researches the links between new media cultural industries and the visual web forms that were produced in the socio-economic context of the dot-com speculative bubble.

Pritika Chowdhry, Special Committee MA Degree in Visual Culture, Art

Sarah Chu, Curriculum & Instruction, researches learning and literacy practices in video games.

Daisy Du, East Asian Languages and Literature, studies modern Chinese literature and popular culture.

Bruce Esplin, East Asian Languages and Literature, studies Chinese films that depict the Korean War.

Damiana Gibbons, Curriculum & Instruction, works on media literacy and multimodality with youth media, in particular youth video production.

Willow Hagge, earned her MFA from the Art Department in 2009. She works with found photographs and photo-printmaking process to make work about photography.

Ray Hsu, English works on twentieth century American Literature, American Studies, and cultural theory. Ray is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

Caroline Malloy, Art History focuses on Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially at International Exhibitions.

Jennifer Mikulay, (PhD Special Committee degree in Visual Culture Studies, 2007) looks at the intersection of public sphere theory and contemporary public art.

Nicholas Miller (Class of 2008), designed his major in Visual Culture Studies as an undergraduate student. He is currently a student in the graduate program in Art History at Northwestern University where his research focuses on contemporary American art with a focus on representations of blackness in the visual field.

Amy L. Powell, Art History is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art History Department at UW-Madison. Her dissertation examines the ways in which transnational contemporary artists use temporality as a critical framework for interrogating issues of subjectivity,  representation, and spectatorship.

Stefan Osdene, Art History examines issues of race and representation in the material and visual culture of contemporary American hip-hop culture.

Matthew Rarey, Art History studies displays and representations of race and cultural difference in the popular visual media of Latin America, Africa, and the United States.

Heather S. Sonntag, Languages and Cultures of Asia is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Languages & Cultures of Asia at UW-Madison. Her research combines interests in Central Asian cultural history, cultural encounter, and early photography.

Vikram Tamboli, History

Christa M. Tiernan, English studies the intersections between literature, visual culture, and material culture in Victorian England.

K.L.H. Wells, Art History, studies Japonisme and Anglo-American design.

Emily Yu, English is currently interested in literary criticism and the 18th Century novel. Her secondary interests include film and cultural studies. Her hobbyhorses include 18th Century comets and their cultural impact, anime films and parodies.

Weili Zhao, Curriculum & Instruction

Beth Zinsli, Art History works on the contemporary art and visual culture of the Americas, the global history of photography, and the intersections of art, visual culture, and technology.