Contact a Current Student
Below you'll find information about some of our current students. Feel free to contact them with questions about life in the Art History Department and at the University of Chicago.
Kris Cohen
Kris Cohen studies intimacy, belonging and collectivity in mediated environments. This means that he's not wedded to the obvious differences between contempoary art photography and flickr.com, a performance art piece and a street protest, the aesthetics of painting and the aesthetics of ordinary life. He does, however, think that Chicago's "lack" of an "art scene" is one of its great and unsung strengths, as it makes all sorts of space for more lateral and less monetized practices, whether artistic or just interruptive. Which is to say, if the idea of life in the artless Midwest makes you anxious, talk to Kris. He's lived in Chicago since 1994, although he was in London from 2001 to 2005. He is advised by professors Darby English, WJT Mitchell and Lauren Berlant, but learns so much from faculty and students all over the University.
Joana Konova
Native to Bulgaria, Joana earned a master's degree in German literature with minors in Media Studies and Dutch from the University of Cologne, Germany. She studied and worked in Cologne for seven years, leaving the city for semester exchange programs in Vienna and Paris, and short study trips to the Low Countries. In Cologne, Joana worked as a research and editorial assistant as well as a print and radio correspondent on art. In the U.S., she has taught several undergraduate courses on Western Civilization, German Literature, Film, and Art Appreciation, and has been teaching German at the Goethe-Institut in Chicago since 2004. At a certain point in her graduate studies, Joana took a course on ekphrasis and became enmeshed in text-image relations. This gave rise to her desire to understand images better, and eventually brought her to this department. She hopes to acquire expertise in Italian Renaissance painting — at least to the degree to which she has already mastered the mystery of tiramisu.
Michelle Maydanchik
Michelle graduated in 2005 from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in Art History. Before joining the department, she spent two years working in the contemporary art world in New York. As a modernist, Michelle is focusing on postwar Central and Eastern European art with a special interest in the 1980s and 1990s. She spends most of her free time sampling Chicago's hot dog offerings.
Sarah Miller
Sarah holds a BA from the University of Michigan in Arts & Ideas in the Humanities, and an MA from Tufts University in Art History and Museum Studies. Along the way she has interned in various museums, including the DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, the Harvard University Art Museums, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her dissertation-in-progress is titled "Inventing 'Documentary' in American Photography, 1930-45," for which she has won research fellowships from CLIR, the ACLS/Luce Foundation, the Center for Creative Photography, and the University. She currently lives in Los Angeles so she can swim outside year-round, but is happy to talk to prospectives (and current students) about any stage of the PhD program — most helpfully, perhaps, on the subjects of fellowship applications and archival research in the U.S.
Julia Orell
Julia Orell entered the PhD program at the University of Chicago in 2002 to study Chinese Art History after completing her M.A. degree in Art History with minors in Sinology and Economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt (Germany). Her current focus is on Song dynasty painting within a broader interest in issues regarding the construction of space, region, and place, as well as history and memory. She spent a year of research in Beijing in 2006/07 and is now back in Chicago to work on her dissertation. While not too fond of living in Hyde Park, Julia appreciates being so close to the library, has been enjoying the pursuit of her passion for dance (ballet) at the University, and shares an interest in exploring good food in Chicago with many of her colleagues.
Stephanie Su
Stephanie Su comes from Taiwan, where she received her B.A. in English Literature, with a minor in Education, and her M.A. in Art History. While writing her M.A. thesis on French art, Stephanie worked at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which holds great collection of Chinese art and artifacts. Encountering both Eastern and Western art led her to the PhD program at the University of Chicago, where she plans to investigate the interplay between two cultures, in particular the works of modern Chinese artists. Stephanie very much appreciates the program's emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, and she admires the interaction between students and faculty, not to mention the school's resources.
Michael Tymkiw
Michael Tymkiw received a BA in French from Yale and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He specializes in twentieth-century art and theory, and is writing his dissertation on the relationship between modernism and Nazi propaganda photography. Upon graduation, he would like to find a way to combine his interests in teaching and curating.
Lisa Zaher
Lisa Zaher received her Bachelor's degree in English Literature — Modern Studies from the University of Virginia in 1997. In 2001, she obtained her Master's degree in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She worked as a Fine Art Representative for AXA-Art Insurance Corporation in New York and Los Angeles before returning to academia in 2004. At the University of Chicago, Lisa's major field is the History of Photography. Her research interests include aesthetic theory, avant-garde film, modernism, and issues in art conservation. Lisa has begun research on a dissertation entitled: Modules and Modulations: Photographic Media and the Contest of Modernism, 1950-1990. She was an editor of the Chicago Art Journalin 2006, and currently coordinates the New Media Workshop. Lisa has found the University of Chicago to be an enriching intellectual environment replete with interdisciplinary dialog amongst its extraordinary faculty and exceptional student body. Despite the unpredictable and sometimes unforgiving Chicago weather, she is comforted by the warmth of her friends and colleagues inside and outside of the department.