Melissa Johnson

Biography

Melissa Johnson is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Illinois State University. She has been a member of the ISU faculty since 2004 and teaches in the areas of modern art, history of photography, and visual culture. Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on the histories of craft, collage & montage, and gender & identity. Her current research examines the intersection of craft with modern and contemporary art. She is currently working on two projects: one that looks at the needlework and handiwork of Hannah Höch in the 1910s and early 1920s, and another focusing on artists making work in direct response to the writings of Virginia Woolf.
Publications include: “A Desire in the Process of Becoming,” Strange Oscillations and Vibrations of Sympathy (University Galleries of Illinois State University: Normal, IL, 2017); “Italy zerwühlt: Hannah Höch’s Dadaist Italienreise,” Colloquia Germanica (Vol. 46, 2013 [2016], Issue 3; “Weimar Cultural Production: Visual Pleasure and Radical Critique in the Work of Hannah Höch,” in Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939: Expanded Social Roles for the New Woman Following the First World War (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); and “Souvenirs of Amerika: The Weimar Mass-Media Scrapbook of Hannah Höch,” in The Scrapbook in American Life (Temple University Press, 2006).
She holds a Ph.D. in art history from Bryn Mawr College, a M.I.L.S. in archives from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and a B.A. in art history and English from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She is the Graduate Coordinator for the MA in Visual Culture and Core faculty for Women's & Gender Studies.