Graduate Students

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Allen, Lily (Doctoral Candidate)
lily.allen@email.ucr.edu
Areas of interest: 19th and early twentieth century art of the United States and Europe, particularly Spain and France. Asian American art history. Early history of photography, particularly on the West Coast. My dissertation explores the pan-Pacific social and artistic milieu of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s, and the unique modernist painting style that arose from it, through the lives and works of artists Stanton Macdonald Wright, Benji Okubo, Hideo Date, and Mabel Alvarez.
Awards/Fellowships:
2023-2024: Tyson Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
2023-2024 Center for Ideas and Society Humanities Graduate Student Research Award
2023-2024 UCR Dissertation Year Program Fellowship
2022-2023 Center for Ideas and Society Humanities Graduate Student Research Award
2022-2023 Barbara B. Brink Travel Award
2021-2022 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
2019 California Museum of Photography Curatorial Fellowship

H.C. ArnoldArnold, H.C. (Doctoral Candidate)
homer.arnold@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: 20th Century American Art History with a particular focus on late 20th century curatorial practices and the intersections between visual art and social movements. His dissertation examines how a Los Angeles-based exhibition initiative named “Carp” developed a curatorial response to the social and political shifts in both American culture and art practice from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. His project engages in both curatorial studies and regional art histories.
Awards/Fellowships:
2023 HEERF Dissertation Year Fellowship
2021 Françoise Forster-Hahn Research Travel Award
2021 Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant
2020 Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship
2019-2020 Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts Fellowship
2019 Ernest Propes Endowed Graduate Fellowship
2019 Outstanding Teaching Assistant
2018 Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship
Molly BondBond, Molly (Doctoral Candidate)
molly.bond@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: 15th- to 17th-century Italian sculpture and sculptural practice, with a special interest in the history and historiography of Cinquecento Italian relief sculpture. Her current research examines late 16th-century bronze relief of the Marche region through the prism of spatiality at a multitude of scales — from the bodily to the regional — and across a series of physical, symbolic, and representational locations.
Awards/Fellowships:
Fall 2022 Doctoral Fellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut
2021 Jean Rose Warnke Research Award
2020-2021 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
2020 Richard G. Carrott Graduate Travel Award
2017-2018 Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts Fellowship
Elizabeth CarletonCarleton, Elizabeth (Doctoral Program)
elizabeth.carleton@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Print culture of 17th-century Europe
Awards/Fellowships:
2022-2023 Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts Fellowship at UCR Arts
2021-2022 Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts Fellowship at UCR Arts
2021-2022 UC Riverside Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship
Emily CitinoCitino, Emily (Doctoral Program)
emily.citino@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Modern and contemporary Latin American art, performance art and conceptual practices by women artists of the 1960s & 1970s
Awards/Fellowships:
2022 California Museum of Photography Curatorial Fellowship
Sarah Grace FaulkFaulk, Sarah (Doctoral Program)
sarah.faulk@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Performance, Conceptualism, Video art, Intermedia Art, Artist Documentation, and Text-Based Art.
Awards/Fellowships:
2022 Center for Ideas and Society Travel Grant
2022 Gluck Fellowship for the Arts
2021 National Endowment for the Humanities, Color Film Emergency Project Fellow
2020-2021 Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship
Keko JacksonJackson, Keko (MA Program)
kekoa.jackson@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Modern and contemporary art and photography, archival practices and ethnic studies
LeBlanc, Timothy (MA Program)
Lugovska, Alina (MA Program)
McNelis, Ashley (Doctoral Candidate)
ashley.mcnelis@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Dance, performance, photography, video art, feminist theory, labor theory, care
Awards/Fellowships:
2023–2024 Barbara B. Brink Graduate Travel Award, Department of the History of Art
2023–2024 Center for Ideas and Society Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant
2023–2024 Gluck Fellowship for Adult Programs at UCR ARTS
2023 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Department of the History of Art
2023 Departmental Grand In Aid for Curatorial Research, Media & Cultural Studies Department
2022–2023 Gluck Fellowship for Adult Programs at UCR ARTS
2021–2022 Gluck Fellowship for Adult Programs at UCR ARTS
2020 California Museum of Photography Curatorial Fellowship

Melissa ReyesReyes, Melissa Nini (MA Program)
mreye184@ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Pre-modern - Early Modern Art with an emphasis on French Gothic architecture and Baroque sculptures and painting.
Awards/Fellowships:
2022-2023 Gluck Classroom Fellowship Program
Saden, Alexandre (Doctoral Program)
alexandre.saden@email.ucr.edu
Salisbury, Sarah (Doctoral Program)
sarah.salisbury@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Modern and contemporary American art, Indigenous North American art and archeology, art and ecology, ecocritical methods.
Awards/Fellowships:
2019-2020 Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship
Athena SesmaSesma, Athena (MA Program)
athena.sesma@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Ethnographic and archeological collections of Mesoamerican art objects in Mexico City from the late 19th century into the 20th century, body modification, metallurgy, and luxury arts of Mesoamerica, specifically the Mexica of Central Mexico.
Awards/Fellowships:
2023-2024 The Françoise Forster-Hahn Graduate Travel Award
2023 FLAS Scholarship from Stanford University, Nahuatl Summer Intensive Program at the University of Utah
2022-2023 Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts Fellowship
Kamryn SilerKamryn, Siler (MA Program)
kamryn.siler@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: The Dance of Death from the Medieval to Baroque, particularly the move from a literary genre into other artistic depictions — painting, print, performance.
Cambra SklarzSklarz, Cambra (Doctoral Candidate)
cambra.sklarz@email.ucr.edu
Area of Interest: American art of the eighteenth and nineteenth, centuries; materials; ecocriticism.
Dissertation Title: The Artist and the Ecosystem: Strategies for the Use and Reuse of Materials in Early America
Awards/Fellowships:
2023-2025 Diane and Michael Maher Curatorial Fellow of American Art, Harvard Art Museums
2022-2023 McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Barra Foundation Art and Material Culture Dissertation Fellowship
July 2023 The Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Short-Term Fellowship
August 2022 American Philosophical Society, Swan Foundation Short-Term Resident Research Fellowship for Revolutionary-Era Material Culture
June-July 2022 American Antiquarian Society, Drawn to Art Fellowship
Summer 2022 University of California, Riverside, Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship
2019-2020 and 2020-2021 UCR Arts, Gluck Fellowship
2020 Decorative Arts Trust Summer Research Grant
2020 Barbara B. Brink Graduate Travel Award
2018-2019 University of California, Riverside, Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship Award

Rebecca TeagueTeague, Rebecca (Doctoral Program)
rebecca.teague@email.ucr.edu
Areas of Interest: Area of Interest: Early Italian Renaissance figural sculpture and tomb monuments
Valdez, Christian (MA Program)
christian.valdez@email.ucr.edu
Areas of interest: Esoteric Buddhist Art, Digital Art, Memes, Manga and any work which questions the hegemony of the global order.
Lexie VargaVarga, Lexie (Doctoral Program)
lexie.varga@email.ucr.edu
Areas of interest: Violence in avant-garde movements, particularly Dada and Surrealism; late 19th to mid-20th century photography; early pornography.