Erin Park Cohn
Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
Education
B.A., Smith College
Fields
American History; Cultural History; Race History and Theory
Dissertation Topic
"Art Fronts: Visual Culture and Race Politics in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States"
Dissertation Committee
Personal Statement
My dissertation examines the intersections of visual culture, in particular the visual arts, and the politics of race in the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. Tracing the careers of a cohort of artists, both black and white, from the politicization of art on the Left and in the Federal Art Project in the 1930s through the McCarthy Era and into the 1960s, the project draws connections between the New Negro movement of the 1920s and 30s and the post-war civil rights movement. It demonstrates the ways in which artists and activists made use of the visual to claim citizenship and social justice for African Americans in a variety of ways throughout this period, illuminating a long tradition of visual activism around issues of race in twentieth-century America.
