Art History Faculty
David C. Parrish
Professor of Art History
Professor David Parrish, who got his doctoral degree from Columbia University, teaches and does research in ancient art and archaeology, specifically Greek Art Roman Art, in addition to having a secondary field of Medieval European Art, for which he offers a course. He also teaches the History of Islamic Art and a class in Art Museum Practices, which is an introduction to the museum world and potential museum careers for students. Mr. Parrish has published a book and articles on mosaic art of the Roman imperial era, focused on Roman North Africa and Roman Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He also contributed to and edited a volume on Roman urbanism. Currently, Mr. Parrish co-directs a research project entitled the Corpus of the Mosaics of Turkey, with two books in print and a third in preparation. He regularly gives papers at international conferences, most recently in Portugal (July 2016). Mr. Parrish also is the president of the North American Branch of AIEMA, the International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaics. There is a link to a more complete biography [read more].
Catherine Dossin
Associate Professor of Art History, Area Coordinator
Catherine Dossin is Associate Professor of Art History at Purdue University and Editor of the Artl@s Bulletin. Originally from France, she received a Master’s degree from the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s-1980s: A Geopolitics of Western Art Worlds (Routledge, 2015), the co-editor with Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel of Circulations in the Global History of Art (Routledge, 2015), the co-author with Lynn Boland of Louise Blair Daura: A Virginian in Paris (University of Georgia, 2017), and the editor of France and the Visual Arts since 1945: Remapping European Postwar and Contemporary Art (Bloomsbury, 2018). She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled French Images of America in the Age of Revolutions, 1760s-1820s: The Visual and Global History of a Colonial Mirage.
At Purdue University, she teaches courses on Western Modern and Contemporary Art, Latin American Art, Women Artists, and Global Art.
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler
Associate Professor of Design History, Area Coordinator
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler is an Associate Professor of Design History in the department of Art and Design. Her research focuses broadly on ordinary spaces and objects in the context of everyday life, and her current project is about the progressive origins and emerging problems of the American open plan office (“office cubicles”) in the late 20th century. Kaufmann-Buhler has presented her research at various national conferences and is currently in the process of developing several articles as well as a book on her open plan office research. She earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Design Studies, her MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and her BA in American Culture from Vassar College. [read more]
Beth Woodward
Assistant Professor of Practice in Art History
Beth Woodward is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Art and Design and is affiliated with the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program. A specialist in the history of art and architecture of the European Middle Ages, Beth holds a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago, a Master’s degree in art history from Florida State University, and undergraduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Prior to joining Purdue, Beth served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture at Bates College in Maine (2019-2023) and at Lake Forest College in Illinois (2018-1019). Her teaching interests include early and late medieval art, Romanesque and Gothic architecture, the arts of the Islamic world, art and exchange in the global Middle Ages, the arts of the book, theories and methods of art history, and representations of the afterlife.
Beth’s research focuses on the material culture of medieval romance, particularly illuminated vernacular manuscripts and the intersection of artistic and literary practices during the later Middle Ages. This research has been supported by grants from the University of Chicago and the Mellon Council on Library & Information Resources. Her most recent publication focuses on the iconography of illuminated Roman de la Rose manuscripts, which appears in Approaches to Teaching the Romance of the Rose (MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature, 2023).
Linda Martin
Lecturer of Art History
Linda M. Martin received her M.A. Degree in Art History from Michigan State University. She then continued her graduate work in Italy, where she studied the methods and theory of art conservation and restoration. She earned a Certificato degli Studi, Conservazione e teoria del restauro delle opera d’arte e Museologia from l’Universita Internazionale dell’Arte of Florence. She worked for several years as a professional painting conservator first in Italy, then in Copenhagen and in Amsterdam. Professor Martin teaches courses on Northern Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, and Baroque art history. She has also taught Italian for the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Her research focuses on the relationships between the arts of the Renaissance and the political and social life of the period, both in Italy and in Northern Europe. She is also investigating the influence of Flemish art on Italian Renaissance painting.
Allie Brandt
Lecturer of Art History
Allie Brandt is an Art History Lecturer and an Independent Curator. She received her B.A. in Art History from Purdue University with a minor in Anthropology. In between her Undergraduate and Graduate studies she worked at the IMA (now Newfields) and Ripley Auction House in Indianapolis. She then went on to receive her M.A in Fine and Decorative Arts from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London where she wrote her Master's Thesis on the symbolic meaning of armor in Elizabethan portraiture. Upon her return to the United States she has curated several exhibitions including The Unseen World of Charles Altamont Doyle and John Ruskin and his “Frenemies” at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino California, as well as She Contains Multitudes for the Purdue Galleries. Professor Brandt predominantly teaches the Art History Survey of Western Art from 1400 to Present. Her research interests are eclectic and change with each project however she approaches each project through an object-based and interdisciplinary lens. Her current project explores the material culture of mid nineteenth-century American homes with a particular focus on ephemera, craft, keepsakes, and home adornment.