Michelle Moseley-Christian wins first William Levin Award for Research in the History of Art
Michelle Moseley-Christian, associate professor of art history in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies’ School of Visual Arts has been named the first recipient of the William R. Levin Award for Research in the History of Art by the Southeastern College Art Conference.
The award was recently announced at the 70th annual meeting of the SECAC in Sarasota, Florida, at the Ringling College of Art and Design.
Of the 34 applicants, the selection committee named Moseley-Christian the winner for her proposal “Women and Wildness in Early Modern Northern European Visual Culture: Picturing the ‘Wild Woman’ c. 1300-1650.”
The “wild woman” emerged in medieval folk legend, literary, and visual sources as a terrifying monster known for irrational animal behavior, insatiable sexual appetites, and brutal violence. Images of wild women informed depictions of witches and “savage” natives of the New World as ways to picture groups that were perceived as — real or imagined — cultural threats.
A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2007, Moseley-Christian is a specialist in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Her publications include the essays “Salvation and Community in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Mennonite Portraiture: Egbert van Heemskerck's Portrait of Jacob Hercules and His Family, 1669;” “Confluence of Costume, Cartography, and Early Modern Chorography;” “Marketing Mary Magdalene in Early Modern Northern European Prints and Paintings;” and "Pronk Poppenhuisen: Seventeenth-Century Didactic Dutch Dollhouses for Women.”
Moseley-Christian received her bachelor's degree and master's degree from the University of Alabama and her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.
The Southeastern College Art Conference Review facilitates cooperation and fosters ongoing dialog about pertinent creative, scholarly, and educational issues between teachers and administrators in universities, colleges, community colleges, professional art schools, and museums. Although the organization represents 12 southern states, members are located across the United States and abroad.
