Author: Jacqueline Francis

Writer, researcher, educator, curator, arts consultant, and occasional artist in San Francisco, California. I'm Dean of the Humanities and Science Division at California College of the Arts.

DAHS Job: Assistant Editor, Brown University Digital Publications

Brown University Library seeks to hire a creative, highly organized, and enthusiastic individual for the position of Assistant Editor, Brown University Digital Publications. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown University Digital Publications is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age. This is an exciting opportunity to join an innovative, expanding program committed to integrating diversity, equity, and social justice into the practice and production of digital publications for both scholarly audiences and the wider public.

For full description and to apply:

https://brown.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/staff-careers-brown/details/Assistant-Editor_REQ198485-1

JOB OPPORTUNITIES: University of Southern California, Art History– Modern Art & Visual Culture (Open Rank; Assistant Professor)– Deadline for applications, Nov. 1, 2024)

Application deadline:  Nov 1, 2024

The Department of Art History at the University of Southern California invites applications for two full-time, tenure-track positions in Modern Art and Visual Culture, one Open Rank and the other at the rank of Assistant Professor. For both, we look for applicants with a strong research profile and welcome applications across a range of research methodologies and areas working on Modern Art and Visual Culture from 1750-present. Applicants must have a commitment to effective teaching and mentoring at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The PhD must be in hand by start date.

Applications should include a brief cover letter describing research and teaching interests (no more than 3 pages); a curriculum vitae; and a writing sample of no more than 30 pages. In order to be considered for this position, applicants are required to submit an electronic USC application. 

Applicants for the Open Rank position in Modern Art and Visual Culture should list 3 references and can apply through this job link: https://usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-angeles/open-rank-faculty-position-in-modern-art-and-visual-culture/1209/70344464896 .

Applicants for the Assistant Professor position in Modern Art and Visual Culture should submit 3 letters of recommendation and can apply through this job link: https://usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-angeles/assistant-professor-in-modern-art-and-visual-culture/1209/70679299872 . Further materials may be requested at a later date.

Applications, addressed to Suzanne Hudson as the chair of the Search Committee, must be received by November 1, 2024.

The annual base salary range for this position is $106,400 – $213,655. When extending an offer of employment, the University of Southern California considers factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the candidate’s work experience, education/training, key skills, internal peer equity, federal, state and local laws, contractual stipulations, grant funding, as well as external market and organizational considerations.

USC is an equal-opportunity educator and employer, proudly pluralistic and firmly committed to providing equal opportunity for outstanding persons of every race, gender, creed and background. The university particularly encourages members of underrepresented groups, veterans and individuals with disabilities to apply. USC will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities unless doing so would result in an undue hardship. Further information is available by contacting uschr@usc.edu.

USC will consider for employment all qualified applicants with criminal records in a manner consistent with applicable laws and regulations, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for employers and the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and with due consideration for patient and student safety. Please refer to the Background Screening Policy Appendix D for specific employment screen implications for the position for which you are applying.  

Fellowship Opportunity: The Betsy James Wyeth Fellowship in Native American Art at SAAM (Applications due Oct. 15, 2024)

One fellowship will be awarded annually in support of a 12-month residency for a scholar at the predoctoral level or a 9-month appointment for a postdoctoral or senior-level researcher. Residencies must take place between June 1, 2025, and August 31, 2026, and begin on the 1st or 15th of the month. Housing is not provided.  

The Betsy James Wyeth Fellowship in Native American Art carries a stipend of $53,000 and an allowance of up to $5,000 for short research trips. Additional funds will be provided to help with the fellow’s health insurance premiums and travel to Washington, DC. The Smithsonian’s Office of International Relations will assist with arranging J-1 exchange visas for any recipients who require them

More info here:

https://americanart.si.edu/research/fellowships/betsy-james-wyeth

Publications Coordinator (FT, contract—The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, CA) — apply now

Job Description: Job Description

About the Role

The Publications Coordinator helps the Publications Department create books and catalogues that document The Huntington’s exhibitions and collections. Reporting to the Manager of Book Publishing and working closely with the volume editors on each book project, the Coordinator assists the Manager of Book Publishing with assembling content for the books, including obtaining images, securing the permission to reproduce them, and coordinating and tracking author manuscripts. The Coordinator also makes sure that manuscripts move efficiently and accurately through the stages of copyediting, design, print, and distribution. They will also serve as publication coordinator for a companion volume to The Huntington’s exhibitions and programming for the occasion of the United States’s semi-quincentennial in 2026.

S/he/they demonstrates a background of working directly with people from diverse racial, ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, using a welcoming, inclusive, and accessible approach.

This is a limited-term position expected to last through approximately January 2026.

More info here.

“Pathways to Rochester Institute of Art: Art and Design Edition” — Academic Open House, Wed., Aug. 14, 2024, 1-2:30PM EST (via Zoom)

Pathways Art and Design Edition

Log into an “academic open house” to learn more about faculty career paths and opportunities within the Rochester Institute of Technology College of Art and Design (Rochester, NY, USA). RIT encourages historically underrepresented minority and women MFA or PhD candidates and graduates who are practicing artists, designers and photographers to register. This session is aimed at those interested in exploring a faculty role at RIT.

  • Learn about the College’s strategic plan and areas of growth
  • Get your job search questions answered and discover what search committees look for
  • Find out about anticipated or current faculty openings 
  • Understand expectations of incoming faculty
  • Hear from faculty and administrators about the culture and working environment at RIT 

Artists in the following disciplines represented within the College of Art and Design are invited to register:

3D Digital Design | Ceramics | Film and Animation | Fine Arts Studio | Furniture Design | Glass | Graphic Design | Illustration | Industrial Design | Interior Design | Medical Illustration| Metals and Jewelry Design | Motion Picture Science  | New Media Design | Photographic and Imaging Arts (Advertising/Fine Art/Photojournalism/Visual Media Options) | Photography and Related Media | Photographic Sciences | Studio Arts | Visual Arts-All Grades | Visual Communication Design.

Register here: https://bit.ly/PathwaystoRIT

Questions can be directed to: LOSOFR@RIT.EDU.


JOB OPPORTUNITY: Assistant Professor, Tenure Track—Latin American and Latinx/e History and/or African American Art History—San Francisco State University (application review begins Feb. 1, 2024)

Department/School Name: School of Art
Area of Specialization: Art History
Rank of Appointment: Assistant Professor

San Francisco State University, School of Art seeks applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Art History with a specialization in Latin American and Latinx/e art history and/or African American art history. Position begins August 2024.


The mission of San Francisco State University is to create an environment for learning that promotes appreciation of scholarship, freedom, human diversity, and the cultural mosaic of the City of San Francisco and the Bay Area; to promote excellence in instruction and intellectual accomplishment; and to provide broadly accessible higher education for residents of the region, state, the nation, and the world. Ph.D. required. Salary commensurate with qualifications. Application review begins 2/1/2024 and continues until filled.


Send cover letter describing research interests and relating your experience to the required qualifications, a current CV, a statement on how your teaching and creative work align with the commitment of the School of Art to foster an inclusive and diverse academic community, writing sample, sample syllabi, and contact information of three references letters of recommendation to be requested later. Access application portal at: https://careers.pageuppeople.com/873/sf/en-us/job/533826/assistant-professor-art-history-school-of-art

Lecture: “Black Capitalism and the City: African American Insurance Companies and the Actuarial Imagination” (Fri., Oct. 20, 2023—5:30 PM CDT)

Join the Graham Foundation, Places Journal, and the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) for the inaugural SAH | Places Prize Lecture by architectural historian Ginger Nolan. Nolan is the inaugural recipient of the SAH | Places Prize on Race and the Built Environment, a unique collaboration between SAH and Places that supports the production of a major work of public scholarship that considers the history of race and the built environment through a contemporary lens.

Nolan’s talk explores how African American-owned insurance companies negotiated the (often vexed) aims of pursuing financial gain while also trying to create more equitable cities. For most of the twentieth century, these insurance companies controlled more wealth than any other African American enterprise and played an outsize role in shaping cities and suburbs. In efforts to reverse the effects of redlining, disinvestment, and segregation, these companies used housing developments and corporate architecture—including the first and only African American skyscraper—to redress discriminatory forms of urbanism and racial stereotypes. The talk will evaluate the urban and architectural interventions of African American insurance companies, using the companies’ office buildings, housing developments, and mortgage-lending practices to engage debates around Black capitalism and Black Marxism. While recent scholarship has focused on the biopolitical tendencies of the white-owned insurance industry, the history of African American insurance demands a more subtle analytical framework, as these companies’ efforts vacillated between the biofinancial logics of actuarial techniques and, on the other hand, strategies of care and contestation.

Following the talk, architectural historian Charles L. Davis II will moderate a discussion with Nolan. Davis is an associate professor of architectural history and criticism at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of the SAH Race + Architectural History Affiliate Group.

Free registration here. The talk will be held at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts; it will be live-streamed via YouTube and registrants will receive the link in advance.

SAH will host a reception at the Charnley-Persky House, located at 1365 N Astor St, immediately following the event.

This program is presented in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial: CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal.

Ginger Nolan is an assistant professor of architectural history and theory at the University of Southern California. Her research explores relationships between architecture, media technologies, race, and governmentality. She is the author of Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design (2021) and The Neocolonialism of the Global Village (2018), both published by the University of Minnesota Press. She is currently researching race, actuarial thought, and urbanism, focusing on the role of twentieth-century African American insurance companies in shaping cities and suburbs in the United States.

Founded in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is an international nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study, interpretation and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes and urbanism worldwide. SAH serves a network of local, national and international institutions and individuals who, by profession or interest, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. SAH promotes meaningful public engagement with the history of the built environment through advocacy efforts, print and online publications, and local, national and international programs.

Founded at MIT and Berkeley in 1983, Places Journal is an independent, nonprofit journal of public scholarship on architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Bridging from the university to the profession to the public, Places features scholars, journalists, designers, and artists who are responding to the profound challenges of our time: environmental health and structural inequity, climate crisis, resource scarcity, human migration, rapid technological innovation, and the erosion of the public sphere.

Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications.

Job Opportunity, Curator of the Indigenous Arts of the Americas at Michael C. Carlos Museum [Emory Museum—Atlanta, GA USA]

Application information here.

Job Opportunity: Curator, African Art at Michael C. Carlos Museum [Emory University—Atlanta, GA USA]

Application information here

Call for Proposals: Race in Design History, An Anthology (deadline Mar. 15, 2023)

Race in Design History: An Anthology

edited by Kristina Wilson, Professor of Art History, Clark University and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Curator of Architecture and Design, National Museum of African American History and Culture

How has race shaped the objects of our designed world? We invite contributors to submit to an edited volume that will focus on the ways design and design histories have engaged ideas about race, whether implicitly or explicitly. Race is a contested category with shifting meanings over time, and perceptions about race influence design history in multiple ways: how objects are designed; how designers imagine their ideal consumer; how designs are put into production and how those designs are marketed. Ultimately, race has an impact on the scope and structure of the residual design archive that historians are left sifting through. This edited volume welcomes contributions in the form of close readings of design objects as well as critical interrogations about design through the lenses of practice, pedagogy, curation, and historiography.

Recent work in design history has emphasized the importance of decolonizing the predominantly Western and Northern biases of the modernist canon. This anthology aims to contribute to that work, and embraces the goals of critical race studies of design, with an investigation of the role of race in all aspects of design history. It welcomes scholarship that looks at under-valued objects of design, scholarship that expands our understanding of what it means to have a career as a designer, and scholarship that illuminates design history in new contexts. We seek narratives of design history that interrogate our assumptions about what is knowable in the past.

We invite contributions on decorative objects, interiors, fashion, architecture, and graphic design, among others, 1800 to the present, global in scope. Proposals should be made for one or more of the following types of essays:

1) Scholarly essays of 3,500-4,000 words: these might be case studies that investigate a movement, a designer, a specific exhibition, or production materials and processes; should engage historical context and demonstrate methodological innovation.

2) Short essays of 1250-1500 words: close readings of objects, keywords, or terms that give the reader an immersive encounter; the style of writing in these essays could be more experimental, and these short pieces will complement the larger contextual discussions offered in the longer essays;

3) Questions of practice essays of 3,000 words: essays that address aspects of museum practice, teaching and pedagogical practice, designers’ practice.

Please send a 300-word proposal and a CV to:

KrWilson@clarku.edu and WilkinsonM@si.edu with “Race in Design History” in the subject line by the deadline of March 15, 2023. Contributors will be notified by mid-April, and drafts will be due September 15, 2023.