Brittney Bailey is a Graduate Fellow specializing in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Modernism. Brittney received her BA in English Literature from Linfield College in 2008 and her MA in Art History from American University in 2015. Her master’s thesis “Masks and Muses: Marie Laurencin’s Artist Group Portraits” examined Laurencin’s oppositional identities as artist and muse within la bande à Picasso. Her current research, which will (hopefully) culminate in a dissertation, looks at the body of work inspired by Rosa Bonheur’s encounter with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as the visual manifestation of a queer utopia. Her research interests include questions of gender, race, and transnational exchange. Brittney has held internships in the education departments of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, DC and the Portland Art Museum, Portland Oregon. She currently resides in Oregon where she teaches in the Art Department of George Fox University.
Jessica Mingoia is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University specializing in Hellenistic and Roman art history, architecture, and archaeology. Her dissertation is titled “In Pergula Natus: Inns and Apartments of Pompeii and Herculaneum” and examines how the sub-elites lived in these ancient cities. She received her B.A. in History with a minor in Theatre Arts from SUNY New Paltz in 2010 and her M.A. in the History of Art and Archaeology from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2016. She has conducted funded research in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Ostia, and Rome and has previously worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and an intern at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. Jessica also teaches undergraduate courses and is a contributor to Smarthistory. She has worked on RAR in various capacities since Volume 35.
Sara Varanese is a PhD Candidate focusing on architecture, urban landscape and ecology in medieval South Asia. Sara has a background in architectural heritage and conservation from Polytechnic University in Turin (Italy), and received her Master’s in Art History and Archaeology from SOAS, London. Her current project investigates a premodern pilgrimage centre in Eastern India and reconfigures its urban structure as an extensive hydrologic landscape. Her interests also include ritual space and performativity, and the visual culture of monastic and ascetic communities and practices.
Margo Weitzman is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University specializing in Italian late medieval to Renaissance art history. She received her BA in fine art and video production with a minor in psychology from DePaul University, and her MA in the humanities with a focus on art history from the University of Chicago. Her MA thesis examined Dominican doctrine and its ties to the phenomenological experience of Masaccio’s Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy. Her current dissertation project explores the ways Italian travelling merchants in India cultivated taste, influenced the early-modern Italian view of Southeast Asia and the East, and shaped visual and material culture during the Age of Exploration. Her research interests include global exchange, the social life of objects, representations of race, and identity formation. Margo’s research was recently funded by a Samuel Kress Foundation fellowship with the Medici Archive Project in Florence, and she has also co-curated exhibitions at the University of Chicago and Bindu Modern Gallery.