• Christina Penn-Goetsch

    Christina Penn-Goetsch

    Professor of Art History


Biographical Sketch

Christina Morris Penn-Goetsch (formerly McOmber), Professor of Art History, teaches courses in art history and is committed to teaching the love of art through the examination of material culture from various peoples and periods. Her classroom teaching is supplemented by formal papers presented nationally and internationally as well as curated exhibitions. Much of her research focuses on gender studies and the art and architecture of early modern Europe, as well as questions of identity in contemporary art. The latter area includes a passionate interest in Native American art, African art, and art of the African Diaspora. She often lectures and publishes on depictions of women from the 14th through the 20th centuries and continues to present her research on the lives of nuns as patrons in 17th-century Rome. She regularly leads trips to the Eternal City and was a study leader for Smithsonian Journey tours to Sicily and Southern Italy in 2013-14.

Academic History

  • PhD in Art History, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, 1997
  • MA in Art History, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, 1989 
  • BA in Art History with Distinction, McIntire School of Art, University of Virginia, 1982

Courses Taught

  • Art and Culture (First-year writing)
  • Greek and Hellenistic Art and Architecture
  • Etruscan and Roman Art and Architecture
  • Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture
  • Medusa's Gaze: Art in the Age of Galileo
  • Saints and She-devils: Images of Women in the Christian West
  • Topic: Queens and Court Ladies in Early Modern Europe
  • Art, Identity, and Revolution: Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Art
  • Modern Art
  • Rome Reborn: Caput Mundi in Antiquity, Renaissance, and Fascist Rome (taught in Italy)
  • Topic:Masculinity and the Male Nude
  • Feminist Art
  • African Art and the Diaspora in North America
  • African American Art
  • American Indian Art: Gender and the Marketplace

Publications

  • "Gladiators, Amazons, and Superheroes," The Fluidity of Gender: Sculptures by Linda Stein, Margo Hobbs Thompson, editor, New York: Have Art: Will Travel, 2010.
  • Review for Susan Shifrin, editor,  Re-framing Representations of Women: Figuring, Fashioning, Portraiting in the "Picturing" Women Project, Burlington, Ashgate Publishing, 2008, SECAC Review, Vol. XV, No. 5, 2010, 625-28.