Community Engagement is all about connection – connecting individuals to one another and to the world around them. Art is an excellent, if not necessary, component of community engagement because it is an impetus, conduit, and culmination for sharing the human experience. As a graduate assistant for Arts Share, I am the liaison to the School of Art and Art History helping to connect studio artists to the broader Iowa community. I hope to further the work of this office by encouraging graduate students to share their work, knowledge, and skills.  

As an emerging scholar in art history, I like to say that I prefer to study the world based on what people create rather than what they destroy. I choose to participate in and uplift discourse that highlights the histories of marginalized communities and individuals. My current research examines how working women in nineteenth-century Paris influenced new directions in representing the female body – a significant site for the development of modernity and the avant-garde.