Catherine recently received her Ph.D. in Cultural History from Tulane University in New Orleans.  Her previous degrees include an MA in Art History and a BA in Humanites. In 2005, she was an exchange scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and in 2006, a fellow at the Murphy Institute for Studies in Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University.

Teaching Interests

Modern European culture—visual arts, literature, and philosophy—particularly fin-de-siècle France and nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. Areas of especial interest are memory studies, history “from below,” politicized intellectual culture, landscape representations, and post-World War II painting.



Current Courses


 HUMN 2100: Arts, Culture, Media (fall 2008)


 HUMN 3093: The Arts and Religious Experience (fall 2008)

Recent Articles

"Subversive Romanticism: Alternative Imaging of the City in East German Photography, 1945-89." Under review, exposure magazine.

"Vacuum at the Center: Cenralizing, Politicizing and Homogenizing Culture in the Two Germanies, 1969-1989." Under review, History of Intellectual Culture.

Recent Conferences & Guest Lectures

“Gender in the GDR: Ursula Mattheuer-Neustädt’s Conceptualization of the Female Sublime.” 2008 College Art Association Annual Conference. Dallas, 2008.

“Re-presenting the Heroic Landscape: East German Appropriations and Adaptations as a Vehicle for Social Critique.” Reconsidering the Arts in the German Democratic Republic, International Conference. Dickinson College, 2007.

“Vacuum at the Center: The Centrality of Culture and its Multiplicity of Meaning in East and West Germany, 1969-89.” Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference. Boulder, 2007.

“Representations of Pride and Shame in the German Landscape.” Symposium, Cleveland Museum of Art/Case Western University Symposium. Case Western Reserve University, 2004.

2004 Northwestern University Art History Graduate Student Symposium: presenter, “Representations of Pride and Shame in the German Landscape: Reflections of Pre- and Post-War National Identity.” Art History Graduate Student Symposium. Northwestern University, 2004.