DIALOGUE Series

The DIALOGUE Series brings nationally prominent scholars together to offer different perspectives on a given topic. By circulating readings in advance of the event and partnering two scholars in conversation, we hope to create an unusually interactive environment for the exchange of ideas.

The DIALOGUE Series is made possible in part by the generous support of the N.W. Harris Lecture Fund

Dialogue 1

"Civilization"

Todd Porterfield and Debora Silverman

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

4:30pm in Harris Hall

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Todd Porterfield is currently Professor in the Département d'histoire de l'art et études cinématographiques of the Université de Montréal, where he held the Canada Research Chair from 2002-2012. He works in the fields of art history, criticism and theory, specializing in European art, 1750-1900, along with French art and politics and the work of the Argentine conceptualist, León Ferrari. His publications include The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French Imperialism, 1798-1836; the co-authored Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David, finalist for the 2007 Charles Rufus Morey Prize; and the edited, Efflorescence of Caricature, 1759-1838. Having taken his B.A. in history from Northwestern University, he went on to do his graduate work in art history at Boston University, and to teach at Princeton and Rice Universities. He has been a research fellow and invited professor in North America and Europe, including at the Clark Art Institute, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Huntington Library and Museum, the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (France), Oxford University, the Université de Paris Ouest, University of Toronto, and the Yale British Arts Center.

  

Debora Silverman holds the University of California President’s Chair in Modern European History, Art, and Culture at UCLA. Her books include Selling Culture: Bloomingdale’s, Diana Vreeland, and the New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan’s America and Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style, which won the 1990 Berkshire History Prize. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim and an NEH Fellowship, and is a former Getty Scholar. Her book Van Gogh and Gaugin: The Search for Sacred Art won the Emerson Prize in the Humanities and the American Historical Association prize for best book in French history and was co-winner of the 2001 PEN American Center/Architectural Digest National Prize for outstanding writing on the visual arts.

 

Past DIALOGUES