bio.html

http://home.uchicago.edu/~bms6 (complete cv, publication list, links for information on books, photographs, etc.)

CURRENT INTERESTS

Barbara Stafford has consistently explored the intersections between the visual arts and the physical and biological sciences from the early modern to the contemporary era. Her current research charts the revolutionary ways the neurosciences are changing our views of the human and animal sensorium, shaping our fundamental assumptions about perception, sensation, emotion, mental imagery, and subjectivity.

EDUCATION

 

HONORS

Honorary Degrees

Teaching

 2001

BOOKS

Symbol and Myth: Humbert de Superville's Essay on Absolute signs in Art. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1979.

Voyage into Substance: Art, Science, Nature and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1984.

Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1991.

Artful Science. Enlightenment, Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.

Good Looking. Essays on the Virtue of Images. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.

Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999.

Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, (coauthor: Frances Terpak) Catalog for an exhibition at the Getty Research, November 13, 2001 to February 6, 2002. (Getty Research Institute, 2001) Getty Catalog Press Release

Author's overview; translations <http://uchicago.edu/~bms6/Books.html> 

Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity, (contributor as member of the Committee on Information Technology and Creativity) William J. Mitchell, Alan S. Inouye, and Marjory S. Blumenthal, Editors, , Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 2003. Available online: http://bob.nap.edu/html/beyond_productivity/

Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

 

TWELVE ARTICLES

"Toward Romantic Landscape Perception: Illustrated Travel Accounts and the Rise of ' Singularity' as an Aesthetic Category," Art Quarterly, 1,.N. S. (Autumn 1977), 89-124.

"Beauty of the Invisible: Winckelmann and the Aesthetics of Imperceptibility," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, Sonderdurck XLIII (1980), 65-78.

   "From Brilliant Ideas to Fitful Thoughts: Conjecturing the Unseen in Late Eighteenth-Century Art," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 48 ( Fall 1985), 329-364.

   "Illiterate Monuments: The Ruin as Dialect and Broken Classic," The Age of Johnson, I (1987), 1-33.

   "Fantastic Images: From Unenlightening to Enlightening Appearances' Meant to be Seen in the Dark," Aesthetic Illusion, ed.by Frederick Burwick and Walter Pape (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 158-179.

   "Voyeur or Observer? Enlightenment Thought on the Dilemmas of Display, " Configurations, I (no. 1, 1992), 93-126.

   Educating Digerati, "A Range of Critical Perspectives: Digital Imagery and the Practices of Art History," Art Bulletin, June 1997, 214-216. 

"Romatic Systematics and the Genealogy of Thought. The Formal Roots of a Cognitive History of Images," in Configurations, (Fall, 2005).

"The Remaining 10%: The Role of Sensory Knowledge in the Age of the Self-Organizing Brain," in Visual Literacy, ed. by James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2005).

"Picturing Uncertainty: From Representation to Mental Representation," in Refresh!Histrories of Media, Art, Science, and Technology, ed. by Oliver Grau (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 2006)

"Self-Eugenics: The Creeping Illusionizing of Identity from Neurobiology to Newgenics," in New Formations, special issue on Eugenics ( Winter 2006).

"Compressed Forms: The Symbol as Emblem of Neural Synchrony," lead essay in Emblematica (Summer 2006).

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

-Member, Folger Library Jubilee Readers Committee.
-Member , Advisory Committee, the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1985--2000.
-Elected Member-at-Large of the Executive Board of the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS).
Second Vice-President (1993-1994), Vice-President (1994-1995), President (1995-1996), American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
-Vice President, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
-Member of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association, 1996.
-International Scientific Advisory Board, Hannover Expo 2000 (The World's Fair for the Millennium: Sections on the Future of the Past and Visions of The 21st Century).
-Advisory Board Member of American Board of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century. Studies Book Reviews, 2000.
-Member, Advisory Commitee, The Species of Origin Project [Charles
Darwin Bi-Centennial/2008], University of Edinburgh

-Member of the Scientific Committee, Consciousness Reframed: New Realities: Being Syncretic, The Planetary Collegium's IXth International Research Conference, Vienna, Austria, 3-5 July 2008

Editorial Boards

European Romantic Review
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Design Issues: A Journal of History, Theory, and Criticism
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
The Semiotic Web
Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics
Visio: International Journal for Visual Semiotics
Word and Image

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