Biography
Emi Finkelstein is a 2020-21 Dissertation Fellow at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, where she is undertaking research for her dissertation “Beyond the Wall: Historicizing, Exhibiting, and Curating East German Art in Post-Socialist Europe.” Her dissertation investigates the ways in which post-unification cultural spaces in Germany tackle issues of historicizing the East German past and reckoning with its place in the nation’s contemporary identity. Her research looks at the relationship between politics, ideology, identity and subjecthood in post-socialist Germany and Europe.
Emi joined the department in Fall 2017 after completing her MLitt at the University of Glasgow, where she wrote a master’s thesis on the politics and history of the East German Leipzig School. In addition to her scholarly work, Emi is a curator, who most recently contributed to the exhibitions “Mary Ethel McAuley: Behind the German Lines” and “Three Artists, Three Women” at the University Art Gallery at the University of Pittsburgh.
Education Details
PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 2017-present
MLitt, History of Art, University of Glasgow, 2016
Dissertation: "Der geteilte Himmel: Aesthetics, Politics, and Pedagogy in the Leipziger Schule"
BA, History of Art/German, Bryn Mawr College, 2014
Thesis: "The Art of Mourning: Melancholia and the Palast der Republik"
Selected Publications
“Colonial Histories at the Humboldt Forum” in a special feature on European Art, Culture and Politics in EuropeNow, ed. Randall Halle, April 2020. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/04/27/colonial-histories-at-the-hu...
“The (Artist’s) Body and the (Global) East” in Art, Identity, & Cultural Diplomacy: (Re) Inventing Eastern and Western Europe from the Cold War to the Present, ed. Cassandra Sciortino. Leuven: Leuven University Press, expected 2020.
“The Map and the Territory” in Carnegie International, 57th Edition: The Dispatch, ed. Ingrid Schaeffner. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 2019.
Selected Awards
Dissertation Fellowship, Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, AY 2020/21
Research Fellowship Finalist, German Fulbright Commission, AY 2020/21 (declined)
Mellon Graduate Fellowship, University Art Gallery, University of Pittsburgh, Summer 2019
Summer Fellow, Foreign Language Area Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Summer 2019
Marstine Prize for Outstanding Work in Public Humanities, University of Pittsburgh, 2019
ETA Fellow, Fulbright/Austrian-American Education Commission, AY 2014/15
Selected Exhibitions
Lead Curator, “Three Artists, Three Women,” University Art Gallery, February 2020
Curatorial Team, “Mary Ethel McAuley: Behind the German Lines,” University Art Gallery, February 2020
Curatorial Assistant, “Dig Where You Stand,” 57thCarnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, October 2018
Guest Curator, “Imag(in)ing Loss: Media and Melancholy in Feminist Experimental Film,” Silver Eye Center for Photography, March 2018.
Selected Presentations
Speaker, “Synchronicity:Contemporary Europe as a Temporal Project” at the Critical Methods of European Culture Studies: Workshop, University of Pittsburgh, September 6-7, 2019
“Dürfen Kommunisten (immer noch) Träumen? Contemporary Display and the Gallery of the Palast der Republik” German Studies Association, 42nd Annual Conference, September 2018.
"Ästhetik, Politik und Pädagogik der Leipziger Schule," presented at the Transatlantic Workshop on East German Art, Dresden, Germany, May 2017.