Visual StudiesHammam 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.
PEOPLE
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Lecturer
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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...
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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.
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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.
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College of Women Class of 1963 Professor
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.
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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.
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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.
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Professor 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...
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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.
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Director of Fine Arts Undergraduate Program
Matt Neff’s work is concerned with historical and current negotiations of power and privilege with regard to race, gender, and class, both as an observer of others, and in terms of his own processes and relationships to these dynamics. This process, which occurs on both levels of consciousness and dissociation, offers a fragile impermanence to the work. Formally, he is interested in a lack of image, anti-icons, and, much like semantic satiation, the repeated and shifting use of common materials like sugar, graphite, air, and ash evoke visual mystery and a visceral reaction to and curiosity about objects and images.