Teaching Interests

My interests center on the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the European Early Modern period, especially in Italy. I am interested in visual rhetoric, the climate of taste, and symbiotic relations between the visual arts and powerful social, governmental, and religious institutions.

Books

The Death of the Baroque and the Rhetoric of Good Taste (New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. Baroque & Rococo: Art & Culture (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1999). Passive Tranquillity: the Sculpture of Filippo della Valle (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997). Art History's History (1994; 2nd edition, New York: Prentice Hall, 2000).

Recent Articles

"La Capella Corsini: un Museo Neoclassico?" Estetica & Ermeneutica, ed. Gianni Vattimo and Roberto Salizzoni (Turin: Trauben, 2005).

"What Kind of Tears: Karlheinz Stockhausen, 9/11, and the Art Metaphor," Journal of American Studies in Turkey, no. 145, Fall 2001 [2003], 91-96.

"Early Modern Period: Art Historical Interpretation," Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, Jonathan Dewald, Editor in Chief (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004), vol. 2, 219-222.

Recent Conferences & Guest Lectures

"Images, Politics, Jesuits, Jansenists," College Art Association, Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, February 2005

"Baroque Visual Rhetoric," Southeast College Art Conference, Annual Meeting, Raleigh, North Carolina, November 2003

"From El Greco to Picasso: the Duncan Philipps Collection," lecture, Denver Art Museum, October 2003

"Rome's Pastoralism and Some Versions of Good Taste," College Art Association, Annual Meeting, New York City, February 2003