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Melissa Johnson

Professor, Art History & Visual Culture
Wonsook Kim School of Art
Office
CVA Center For The Visual Arts 214c
Office Hours
By appointment.
  • 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

280.001Modern Art

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

351.001Special Projects: Art History

444.001Studio Work: Photography

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

Arpillera Workshop. Embroidering Histories: The Chilean Arpilleras 1973 to 2023. Illinois Wesleyan Univeristy - Hispanic Studies Program. (2024)
Dangerous Text(ile)s: the Chilean arpilleras in context. “Embroidering Histories: The Chilean Arpilleras 1973 to 2023”. Illinois Wesleyan University. (2024)
The book has somehow to be adapted to the body. Woolf Words and Tactile Investigations: a commonplace book. Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies [SEACS] annual conference, 2024. Southeastern Association of Cultural Studies [SEACS]. (2024)
“a million hands stitch” … “words and words in phrases”. 33rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. (2024)
• “‘I use words the way I would weave.’: Resonances between Woolf and Ann Hamilton”. 33rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, California State University. (2024)
• “a million hands stitch”…”words and words in phrases”. Illinois Art Education Association (IAEA), 2024 Fall Conference. Illinois Art Education Association. (2024)
• "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