PEOPLE

Hammam Aldouri

Lecturer

Hammam Aldouri holds a PhD in philosophy from the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University (London) and he was a recipient of a Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Critical Studies from the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (New York). Hammam specializes in Continental philosophy and critical theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and his legacies.
David Brainard

Professor of Psychology

I am interested in human vision, machine vision, and computational modeling of visual processing. My primary research is concerned with how the visual system estimates object properties from the information available in the light signal incident at the eye. To study this general problem, I conduct psychophysical experiments to investigate questions such as how object color appearance is related to object surface properties under a wide range of illumination conditions and how color is used to identify objects. In addition, I am interested in developing machine visual systems that can mimic human...
Shira Brisman

Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Visual Studies

Shira Brisman is a historian of early modern art. Her current research investigates the boundaries between privacy and society, patterns and abberations, religious modes of thinking and categories of secularization.
Peter Decherney

Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Cinema & Media Studies

Peter Decherney is an award-winning fine art photographer, filmmaker, and author. He holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Chair in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute.
Gary Hatfield

Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Director of Visual Studies

Gary Hatfield (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison) taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins before coming to Penn in 1987. He works in the history of modern philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, theories of vision, and the philosophy of science. He is a member of the MindCore initiative, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Center for Neuroaesthetics. He has long been fascinated by visual perception and the mind–body problem.
Renata Holod

College of Women Class of 1963 Professor Emerita

Renata Holod is Professor, and Curator in the Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She received her BA in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto, MA in the History of Art from University of Michigan and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University. Professor Holod has served as Convenor, Steering Committee Member, and Master Jury Chair of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson

Executive Director, Wharton Neuroscience Initiative

Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson is the executive director and senior fellow of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. Her research focuses on vision and visual behavior. Her work spans physiological approaches in the retina and early visual cortex to using eye tracking to investigate how human observers look and navigate through the world, how these processes unfold over time and with experience, and the role of social cognition and decision making in these processes. She is an expert on color vision. She received her PhD in Neural Science at New York University.
Tanya Jung

Assistant Dean for Advising and Lecturer in Visual Studies

Dr. Jung holds a M.A in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Missouri and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include the cultural biography of images and she currently teaches courses in the History of Art department and the Visual Studies program.
Michael Leja

Professor Emeritus of the History of Art and Visual Studies

Michael Leja (Ph.D., Harvard) is a Professor in the History of Art and the Visual Studies Program Director. Professor Leja studies the visual arts in various media (painting, sculpture, film, photography, prints, illustrations) in the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily in the United States. His work is interdisciplinary and strives to understand visual artifacts in relation to contemporary cultural, social, political, and intellectual developments. He is especially interested in examining the interactions between works of art and particular audiences...
Gabriel Martinez

Senior Lecturer, Photography

Gabriel Martinez, a Cuban-American visual artist originally from Miami, Florida, works largely with photography, performance and installation. Martinez was a Pew Fellowship in the Arts recipient in 2001 and was granted a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in 2003. He has received two Individual Artists Grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.