Kaitlin Emmanuel

Ph.D. Student in History of Art

Overview

My areas of inquiry include popular media as a site of memory making, dissident visual cultures, and geographies of belonging in diasporas of the Global South. I received a B.A. in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley (2011), followed by an M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University (2017), in which I examined the socio-political legacies that condition art making in Sri Lanka’s modernist avant-garde. My dissertation project is concerned with the mobilization of visual production in the face of state persecution and violence in Sri Lanka from the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary period. This project is informed by studies of alternative modernisms, critical theory, and diaspora studies.

Research Focus