History of Art and Architecture

Kathryn Carney

Biography

Kathryn works on topics related to body culture and popular medicine between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany. With a particular eye towards the role of disability and the legacy of degeneracy theory, Kathryn’s research interrogates normate representations of health and hygiene as well as their biopolitical implications and spatial contexts. Kathryn’s current projects include an extended investigation into the visual and material cultures of hygiene exhibitions in Weimar Germany such as GeSoLei (1926). Kathryn holds an MA from the Centre for the Study of Theory & Criticism at Western University. 

Her additional experiences in arts administration include working as a registrarial assistant for a major corporate collection, community-engaged nonprofit development, grant and copywriting, and more.

She welcomes correspondence in English, German, or Spanish!

Education Details

PhD (in progress), University of Pittsburgh, Department of History of Art and Architecture, 2020-present

MA, Centre for the Study of Theory & Criticism, Western University, 2018-2020
Thesis: "Encountering Others: Degeneration, Distortion, and Disability in Interwar German Visual Culture, 1918-1933"

BA, Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014-2017

Selected Awards

Foreign Language Areas Studies Fellow, European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh, 2021
Art & Sciences Graduate Fellow
, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, 2021
Governor General’s Gold Medal Nominee, Centre for the Study of Theory & Criticism, Western University, 2020
Director’s Entrance Scholarship, Centre for the Study of Theory & Criticism, Western University, 2018
Departmental Travel Grant, Department of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2018
Diversity and Inclusion Award, National Conference on Undergraduate Research, 2018

Selected Conferences

Normate Bodies in Service of Ethno-Nationalism in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (1925),” 45th Annual German Studies Association Conference, 2021
“Renewal and Recuperation in the Future City,” 108th Annual College Art Association Conference, 2020
“Lifelike, Like Life? Orientations and Confrontations in Neue Sachlichkeit Portraiture,” Beyond Life Itself: Social and Political Thought Conference, 2019
“Missing Persons: (In)visibility and Difference in the Work of Hito Steyerl and Luce Irigaray,” Imagining Otherwise: Radical Alterity, Social Justice and Philosophies of Difference, 2019