Staff Profile | Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts

About
Education
Research

Biography

Melissa Johnson is 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.

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 on Core faculty for Women's & Gender Studies.

Current Courses

266.001European Art from Neoclassicism Through Impressionism

411.001Seminar in Visual Culture & Theory: Text and Textiles

311.001Seminar in Visual Culture, History, and Theory: Craft and Modern/Contemporary Art

411.001Seminar in Visual Culture, History, and Theory: Craft and Modern/Contemporary Art

311.001Seminar in Visual Culture, History, and Theory: Text & Textiles

444.001Studio Work: Photography

175.001Gender and Identity in Art & Visual Culture

280.001Modern Art

406.001Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture - Dada and Its Heritage

306.001Seminar in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture: Dada and Its Heritage

444.001Studio Work: Printmaking

Teaching Interests & Areas

Modern art, history of photography, gender, craft, visual culture

Research Interests & Areas

Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on the histories of modern and contemporary art, craft, collage & montage, and gender & identity. Her current research examines the intersection of craft with modern and contemporary art. She is currently working on a project that explores artists making work in response to the writings of Virginia Woolf and has a chapter in the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Transnational Perspectives, titled “’A world where the body is as eloquent and articulate as the text’” SITI Company’s theatrical engagement with the writing of Virginia Woolf.” She’s deeply interested in situating her academic writing and her text- and textile-based work as parallel and, sometimes, integrated practices. She is working on two creative writing and textile projects, “Woolf Words” and “Haptic Investigations,” as well as a project on mending and repair.

PhD Art History

Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr, PA

M.L.I.S. (Master of Library and Information Science) Archives

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI

AB Art History

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI

Book, Chapter

• "A Desire in the Process of Becoming," in Strange Oscillations and Vibrations of Sympathy, ed. Kendra Paitz, Normal, IL: University Galleries of Illinois State University, 2017.

• “Weimar Cultural Production: Visual Pleasure and Radical Critique in the Work of Hannah Höch,” eds., Paula Birnbaum and Anna Nabakov, Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939. Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

• “Souvenirs of Amerika: the Weimar Mass-Media Scrapbook of Hannah Höch,” eds., Patricia Buckler, Katherine Ott, and Susan Tucker, The Scrapbook in American Life, Temple University Press, 2006

Creative Works/Broadcast Media

• “Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works 1997-2020 by Jen Bervin,” audio narration with transcript, 1:1:Infinity, Issue 3 3-ply / Liquid Architecture, https://www.3ply.net/1-1-infinity-3, December 2020

Journal Article

• “Drawing finer and finer the thread between us," Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 99 Spring/Fall 2022, 23-26

• "Italy zerwühlt: Hannah Höch’s Dadaist Italienreise." Colloquia Germanica 46.3 (2013)

Presentations

• "Beatrix Reinhardt and Dianna Frid," Textiles at ISU, University Galleries ISU, March 31, 2023

• "The book has somehow to be adapted to the body. Woolf Words and Tactile Investigations: a Commonplace Book," 32nd Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, Florida Gulf Coast University, June 2023

• Craft Ecologies Workshop, 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Florida Gulf Coast University, June 2023

• "If we try to put reality into words it falls apart; instead reality dwells in shapes": Anne Bogart & Ellen Lauren in SITI Company's Room (2000), 8th International Conference on Movement and Computing Conference, June 2022

• "What he said and she said and make poetry": reading, writing, and stitching Woolf Words," International Virginia Woolf Conference: Virginia Woolf & Ethics," 31st Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, June 2022.

• “'a mosaic would be its image': visual pleasure and critique in Hannah Höch’s scrapbook," Refractions of Mass Culture: Modernist Print Media and the Logic of Multiplication, Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany, September 2022

• “Room: “A world where the body is as eloquent and articulate as the text” SITI Company’s theatrical engagement with the writing of Virginia Woolf," Faculty Biennial, University Galleries ISU, February, 2022

• “’A world where the body is as eloquent and articulate as the text’: Anne Bogart’s theatrical engagement with the writing of Virginia Woolf,” International Virginia Woolf Society, Annual Conference: Profession and Performance, June 2021

• “’Where the Body Is As Eloquent and Articulate as the Text’: Anne Bogart (SITI Company) and Ann Hamilton’s the theater is a blank page,” Feminist Art History Conference, September 2021

• “The Weight of Centuries: Dawn Roe & Virginia Woolf,” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, Feb 22-24, 2018.