Nicholas Mirzoeff

 

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is one of the founders of the academic discipline of visual culture in books like An Introduction to Visual Culture (1999/2009) and The Visual Culture Reader (1998/2002/2012).

He is currently Deputy Director of the International Association for Visual Culture and organized its first conference in 2012.

Since 2013, he has been Visiting Professor of Visual Culture at Middlesex University, London.

His book The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) won the Anne Friedberg Award for Innovative Scholarship from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in 2013.

In 2012, he undertook a durational writing project called Occupy 2012. Every day, he posted online about the Occupy movement and its implications. Open source anthologies of the project are available.

In 2014, he launched After Occupy: What We Learned, an open writing project on the lessons of the social movement.

In 2015 his most recent book How To See The World was published by Pelican in the UK.

Currenty, he is working on a project entitled The Visual Commons #BlackLivesMatter. It looks at the formations of the visual commons from the Haitian Revolution, via Reconstruction and 1968 to the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

Degrees Held

  • BA Honours Oxford University 1980
    • Modern History
  • PhD University of Warwick 1990
    • Art History and History
    Ph.D. dissertation: " Pictorial Form and Social Order in France 1638-1752: L'Academie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture"

Teaching Positions

  • 2009- present: Professor, Media, Culture and Communication; affiliate faculty in Cinema Studies & Performance Studies, New York University
  • 2004- 2008 : Professor, Art and Art Professions, affiliate faculty in Performance Studies, New York University
  • 2001- 2004 : Professor, Art and Comparative Literature, SUNY Stony Brook
  • 1998- 2001: Associate Professor, Art and Comparative Literature, SUNY Stony Brook
  • 1997- 1998 : Associate Professor, Art History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • 1992- 1997 : Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • 1991- 1992 : Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Texas, Austin
  • Spring 1991: Lecturer, Art History, University of California, Irvine
  • Autumn 1984, 1987-8, 1989-90 : Lecturer, Art History, University of Warwick

Selected Grants and Awards

  • SSHRC Canada award for Sound, Vision, Action at McGill University (with Jonathan Sterne) 2014
  • Anne Friedberg Award for Innovative Scholarship. Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2013.
  • 2008 : Co-Pl for Planning Grant, Networking Visual Culture, Scholarly Communications Institute, Andrew Mellon Foundation
  • 2006 : NYU-Steinhardt Challenge Grant
  • 2005 : Visiting Canterbury Fellow, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • 2002 : Visiting Fellow, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown MA
  • 2002 : Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Nottingham, UK
  • 2001 : Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Center, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  • 2001 : William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, Visting Fellow
  • 1996 : Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Institute, Stony Brook University
  • 1994 : Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, Visiting Fellow
  • 1993 : Yale Center for British Art, Visiting Fellow
  • 1992 : J. Paul Getty Center, Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and the Humanities
  • 1991 : NEH Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies

Curatorial and Museum Experience

  • Februray- March, 2009 : Guest Expert, for Jeremy Deller, “It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq,” The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
  • 2005 : Scholar’s Panel and adviser, “The New Jewish Identity Project,” (commissioned photography show on non-Ashkenazi Jewishness), Jewish Museum, New York City
  • 2003 : Primary Adviser, “Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self,” curated by Brian Wallis and Coco Fusco, International Center for Photography, New York City
  • November 2001 : Scholar’s Panel and adviser, Emergence of Jewish Artists in Nineteenth Century Europe, curated by Susan Goodman, The Jewish Museum, New York City
  • Nov. 9-Dec.16, 2000 : Curator: “Intersecting Identities: Jewishness at the Crossroads,” University Art Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook
  • 1999 - : Exhibitions Committee, University Art Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook
  • Scholar’s Panel, Chaim Soutine, curated by Norman Kleeblatt and Kenneth Silver, The Jewish Museum, New York City
  • 1994- 1996 : Exhibitions Committee, Elvehjem Museum, Madison, Wisconsin

Courses

  • E58.2400 Topics in Visual Culture and Cultural Studies: Modernity and Climate Change
  • E90.2120 Foundations of Visual Culture
  • E90.2121 Visual and Critical Analysis: Orientalisms
  • E90.2160 Topics in Visual Culture: Watching Catastrophe: 9-11, Iraq, Katrina

Editorial Boards

  • 2009: Cultural Studies, Editorial Board Member
  • 2007: Journal of Photography and Culture, Editorial Board Member
  • 2001-Present: The Journal of Visual Culture, Editorial Board Member
  • 2002-Present: Situation Analysis, Editorial Board Member
  • 2004-2007: British Film Institute Television Classics, Editorial Board Member

Reserach Interests

  • Visual Culture
  • Cultural History
  • Disability Studies
  • Contemporary Art and New Media
  • Human Rights

 

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