Publications
Publications: Single-Authored Books
Troubling Memorials: American Reckoning with the Stuff of History
Monuments Are Mortal: Public Art, Permanence, and Cultural Vandalism
I AM America: Art and Belief During the Great Depression
Faith in Transit: From Airport Chapels to Multi-Faith Spaces
Faith in Transit: Airport Chapels in the 21st Century
Publications: Edited Books
Publications: Monographs
Publications: Articles & Essays
“Public Art and Racial Reckoning in 21st Century America: Symbolic Capital and Cultural Vandalism,” F&E Edition: The Research Journal of the Vorarlberg University of Education 27 (2021): 11–22.
"In Conversation: Archives and the Pandemic," Archives of American Art Journal 60, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 86–7.
“Authenticity, Memory, and Materiality: Disgraced Memorials and Issues of Permanence,” American Quarterly 73, no. 1 (March 2021): 135–9.
“Anti-Semitism, Propaganda, and Modernism,” in Aaron Rosen, ed., In Focus: Orthodox Boys 1948 by Bernard Perlin (London: Tate Research Publications, September 1, 2016): online.
“Guest Editor’s Statement: Thinking About Forever,” Special Issue, The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence, Public Art Dialogue 6, no.1 (Spring 2016): 1–5.
“Commemorating Disaster and Disobedience: National Park Service Initiatives in the 21st Century,” Social Science Quarterly 97, no. 1 (March 2016): 105–14.
“Transnational 9/11 Memorials: American Exceptionalism and Global Memories of Terrorism,” Jahrbuch für Politik und Geschichte 5 (2014): 123–42.
“Victim Memorials and Public Feeling,” Ekfrase: Nordic Journal of Visual Culture 5, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 98–100.
“Public Art, Public Response: Negotiating Civic Shame in Duluth, Minnesota,” Indiana Magazine of History 110, no. 1 (March 2014): 40–6.
“Nighthawks y el cine negro,” Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, Especial Issue “Edward Hopper y El Cine,” 15, no. 1 (Junio 2012): 26–8.
“Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s The Puritan: Founders’ Statues, Indian Wars, Contested Public Spaces, and Anger’s Memory in Springfield, Massachusetts,” Winterthur Portfolio 46, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 237–69.
“Public Art Chronicles: Louise Bourgeois’ Helping Hands and Chicago’s Identity Issues,” Public Art Dialogue 2, no. 1 (2012): 94–102.
“Women Warrior Memorials and Issues of Gender in Contemporary American Public Art,” Public Art Dialogue 2, no. 2 (September 2012): 190–214.
“Remembering 9/11: Memorials and Cultural Memory,” OAH Magazine of History 25, no. 3 (July 2011): 27–30.
“Makes Me Laugh, Makes Me Cry: Feelings and American Art,” American Art 25, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 2–8.
“Artists in Hollywood: Thomas Hart Benton and Nathanael West Picture America’s Dream Dump,” The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914–1945 7, no. 1 (2011): 9–32.
“In Conversation: Disputation Over Sacred Space in Contemporary America,” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief 7, no. 2 (July 2011): 269–71.
“Public Art Chronicles: Michael Heizer’s Effigy Tumuli,” Public Art Dialogue 1, no. 2 (September 2011): 241–6.
“Believing in Elvis: Popular Piety in Material Culture,” Business Perspectives 14, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 30–8.
“Honoré Sharrer’s Tribute to the American Working People: Issues of Labor and Leisure in Post-World War II American Art,” American Art 16, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 54–81.
“Looking at Labor: Images of Work in 1930s American Art,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 24 (2002): 230–57.
“Death, Art, and Memory in the Public Sphere: The Visual and Material Culture of Grief in Contemporary America,” Mortality 7, no. 1 (2002): 63–82.
“Hangin’ Out at the Leanin’ Tree: Mastery and Mythos in Western American Art, Old and New,” Journal of the West 40, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 16–25.
Guest Editor with Robert L. McGrath, Journal of the West 40, no. 4 (Fall 2001), Special Issue, “Images of the West,” with essays by Nancy Anderson, William Anthes, Rayna Green, Elizabeth Kennedy, and William Truettner, and introductory essay “From Archetype to Stereotype: The Making and Marketing of Western Art,” 6–7.
“Displaying Cultural Difference: The North American Art Collections at the Denver Art Museum,” Museum Anthropology 20, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 1–15.
“Elvis in the Public Sphere: Fans, Faith, and Cultural Production in Contemporary America,” Odense American Studies International Series 24 (October 1996): 1–24.
“New Deal Politics and Regionalist Art: Thomas Hart Benton’s A Social History of the State of Indiana,” Prospects: An Annual of American Studies 17 (1992): 353–78.
“Raising Community Consciousness with Public Art: Contrasting Projects by Judy Baca and Andrew Leicester,” American Art 6, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 62–81.
“Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, and Film Noir,” Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 2, no. 2 (Winter 1983): 14–36.
“The Image of the American Woman in the 1930s: Reginald Marsh and Paramount Picture,” Woman’s Art Journal 4, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1983): 1–4.
“Copies, Collectibles, and ‘Art for the People’,” Artpaper 2, no. 9 (May 1983): 5.
Publications: Book Chapters
“Thomas Hart Benton,” in 150 Stories: The Art Students League, ed. Stephanie Cassidy (New York: The Arts Students League, 2025), forthcoming.
“Maynard Dixon’s Masculinist Take on the American West,” in Maynard Dixon, ed. Kenneth Hartvigsen (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2025), forthcoming.
“Age, Race, and Memory: Grandma Mose’s Postwar Appeal,” in Grandma Moses: Reconsidering an American Icon, ed. Leslie Umberger (Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2025), forthcoming
“Spiritual Surrealists: Joseph Cornell, Mina Loy, and Religious Currents in Interwar American Surrealism,” in Dada and Surrealism: Transatlantic Transactions Between the Great War and The Cold War, ed. James W. McManus (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2024), forthcoming.
“I Am Queen Mary, Copenhagen,” in Breaking the Bronze Ceiling: Women, Memory, and Public Space, eds. Valentina Rozas-Krause and Andrew M. Shanken (New York: Fordham University Press, 2024), 257–60.
“Failure as Success: Sam Durant’s Scaffold, Angela Two Stars’ Okciyapi and the Conundrum of Critique,” in The Failures of Public Art and Participation, eds. Cameron Cartiere and Anthony Schrag (London: Routledge, 2023), 22–42.
“America’s Contemporary Commemorative Landscapes: Themes and Practices in Memorial Mania,” in The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape, eds. Chris W. Post, Alyson L. Greiner, and Geoffrey L. Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2023), 229–42.
“The Art of the Gentling Brothers: Contemporary Realists in the Lone Star State,” in Imagined Realism: Scott and Stuart Gentling, ed. Will Gorham (Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 2021), 141–69.
“Paul Thek and the Muses of Italy: Death, Decay, and the Technological Reliquaries, 1963-1967,” in Republics and Empires: Italian and American Art in TransnationalPerspective, 1840-1970, eds. Melissa Dabakis and Paul Kaplan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 414–40.
“Toppling the Trung Sisters Monument: Cultural Vandalism in Saigon, 1963,” in Decoding Dictatorial Statues, eds. Ted Hyunhak Yoon and Bernke Klein Zandvoort (Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Onomatopee, 2019), 160–9, 279–80.
"Accommodating Mobility: Marjorie Hillis, Edward Hopper, and the Meaning of ‘Home’ in Modern America,” in Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, ed. Leo Mazow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 46–61, 181–3.
“Agnes Pelton’s Visionary Modernism,” in Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist, ed. Gilbert Vicario (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), 30–9.
“Manly Workers and Pin-Up Girls: Sources for Comic Book Superheroes in 1930s American Visual Culture,” in Men of Steel, Women of Wonder: Modern American Superheroes in Contemporary Art, ed. Alejo Benedetti (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2019), 78–113.
“Regional Reputations, Modern Tastes, and Cultural Nationalism: Kentucky and the Index of American Design, 1936-1942,” in Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture, ed. Andrew Kelly (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 10–27.
“Public Feeling, Public Healing: Contemporary Memorials and the Mediation of Grief,” in Cultures of Privacy: Paradigms, Transformations, Contestations, eds. Karsten Fitz and Bärbel Harju (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015), 35–55.
“Mining the Dream Factory: Thomas Hart Benton, American Artists, and the Rise of the Movie Industry,” in American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood (New York: Prestel, 2015), 64–82.
“War Porn: Spectacle and Seduction in Contemporary American War Memorials,” in War Isn’t Hell, It’s Entertainment: Essays on Visual Media and the Representation of Conflict, ed. Rikke Schubart (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 13–30.
“Thomas Hart Benton Illustrates John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,” in A New Literary History of America, eds. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 737–42.
“The Next Step?” in Re-Enchantment, eds. James Elkins and David Morgan (New York: Routledge, 2008), 297–301.
“Rock and Roll Pilgrims: Reflections on Ritual, Religiosity, and Race at Graceland,” in Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred, ed. Peter Jan Margry (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 123–41.
“Victors, Victims, and Western Memories: Monuments at Little Bighorn,” in (Im)Permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time, eds. Judith Schachter and Stephen Brockman (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), 120–8.
“Wandering the Old, Weird America: Poetic Musings and Pilgrimage Perspectives on Vernacular Environments,” in Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists, ed. Leslie Umberger (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 24–45.
“Joseph Cornell and Christian Science,” in Joseph Cornell: Opening the Box, eds. Jason Edwards and Stephanie L. Taylor (Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 113–35.
“Shoot Out: Poking Fun and Challenging Myths in Western American Art,” in Redrawing Boundaries: Perspectives on Western American Art, ed. Peter Hassrick (Denver: The Institute of Western American Art, 2007), 44–55.
“Popular Culture Canonization: Elvis Presley as Saint and Savior,” in The Making of Saints: Contesting Sacred Ground, ed. James F. Hopgood (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 152–68.
“Controversy and Public Art: The Phoenix Pots Episode,” in Infusion: 20 Years of Public Art in Phoenix (Phoenix: Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, 2005), 46–55.
“Elvis Forever,” in Afterlife as Afterimage: Understanding Posthumous Fame, eds. Joli Jensen and Steve Jones (New York: Peter Lang, Inc., 2005), 116–41.
“Complicating Modernism: Issues of Liberation and Constraint Among the Women Art Students of Robert Henri,” in American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910–1945, ed. Marian E. Wardle (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 116–37, 246–9.
“Believing in Elvis: Popular Piety in Material Culture,” in Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture, eds. Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 63–86.
“The Visual Arts in Post-1945 America,” in A Companion to Post-1945 America, eds. Jean-Christopher Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2002), 113–33.
“American Folk Art’s ‘Distinctive Character’: The Index of American Design and New Deal Notions of Cultural Nationalism,” in Drawing on America’s Past: Folk Art, Modernism, and the Index of American Design, eds. Virginia Tuttle Clayton, et al. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002), 60–73.
“Visualizing Black America: Gordon Parks at Life, 1948–1971,” in Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erika Doss (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 220–41.
“‘Revolutionary Art is a Tool for Liberation’: Emory Douglas and Protest Aesthetics at the Black Panther,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy, eds. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 175–87, 278–80.
“Robert Gober’s ‘Virgin’ Installation: Issues of Spirituality in Contemporary American Art,” in The Visual Culture of American Religions, eds. David Morgan and Sally M. Promey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 129–45, 322–4.
“Introduction: Looking at Life: Rethinking America's Favorite Magazine, 1936–1972,” in Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erika Doss (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 1–21.
“Images of American Women in the 1930s: Reginald Marsh and Paramount Picture,” in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, ed. Mary Ann Calo (New York: Icon Editions, 1997), 295–301.
“Making Imagination Safe in the 1950s: Disneyland's Fantasy Art and Architecture,” in Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance, ed. Karal Ann Marling (New York: Flammarion, 1997), 178–89, 216–8.
“The Art of Cultural Politics: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism,” in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 97–136.
“The Year of Peril: Thomas Hart Benton and World War II,” in Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer, and Intellectual, eds. Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains (Columbia, Missouri: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1989), 35–63.
Publications: Catalogue Essays
“Epilogue: Old West, New West: Postwar and Contemporary American Artists,” in The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum, eds. Thomas Smith and Jennifer R. Henneman (Denver: Petrie Institute of Western American Art, 2020), 202–13, 219.
“Edward Hopper in Cape Ann, 1928,” in Edward Hopper: A Fresh Look at Landscape, ed. Ulf Küster (Basel: Fondation Beyeler, 2020), 46–53.
“Westward Perspectives: An Interview with T.L. Solien,” in T.L. Solien: Toward the Setting Sun, ed. Colleen Sheehy (Fargo and Minneapolis: Plains Art Museum and University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 53–61.
“American Moderns in the 1930s and 1940s: The Triumph of Diversity,” in New Forms: The Avant-Garde Meets the American Scene, 1934–1949 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Museum of Art and University of Iowa Press, 2013), 6–19.
“Ralph Fasanella’s More Perfect Union: Art, Labor, and Politics in Post-World War II America,” in Ralph Fasanella: A More Perfect Union (New York: Andrew Edlin Gallery, 2013), 4–15.
“Cultural Globalization and Critical Regionalism in Contemporary American Art,” in Here, ed. Julien Robson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2011), 17–25.
“Shared Memory: Artists’ Perspectives and Practices,” in Hiding Places: Memory in the Arts, eds. Amy Chaloupka and Leslie Umberger (Sheboygan: John Michael Kohler Art Center, 2011), 93–113.
“Visualizing Faith: Religious Presence and Meaning in Contemporary American Art,” in Coming Home! Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American South, ed. Carol Crown (Memphis: Art Museum of the University of Memphis; Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 20–30.
“Duane Hanson: Social Realist from America’s Heartland,” in Duane Hanson: Portraits from America’s Heartland, ed. Rusty Freeman (Fargo: Plains Art Museum, 2004), 17–33.
“Hung Liu, Anita Rodriguez, Alison Saar, and Emmi Whitehorse: Re-Imaging the American West from Cross-Cultural Perspectives,” in Expanded Visions: Four Women Artists Print the American West (Denver: Women of the West Museum, 2000), 4–5, 28.
“Modern Times: Twentieth-Century American Modernists and Notions of Time,” in Tempus Fugit: Time Flies, ed. Jan Schall (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2000), 100–15.
Publications: Book Reviews
Book Review of Scott Herring, The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modern American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), The Journal of American History 102, no. 2 (December 2015): 930.
Book Review of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Ivan Gaskell, Sara J. Schechner, and Sarah Anne Carter, Tangible Things: Making History Through Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), The Annals of Iowa (2015): 443–5.
Book Review of Samantha Baskind, Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Penn State Press, 2014), Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief 11, no. 1 (2015): 119–20.
Book Review of Gary B. Nash, The Liberty Bell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), The Journal of American History 97, no. 4 (March 2011): 1101.
“Mall Talk,” Review Essay of Nathan Glazer and Cynthia R. Field, The National Mall: Rethinking Washington's Monumental Core (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), and Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), Reviews in American History 39, no. 2 (June 2011): 322–8.
Book Review of Jonathan Fein and Brian Danitz, Objects and Memory: A Documentary Film (2008), The Public Historian 31, no. 3 (August 2009): 119–20.
Book Review of Kristin Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), caa.reviews (posted November 2009): online.
Book Review of Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon, Making American Art (New York: Routledge, 2009), American Studies 50, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2009): 127.
Book Review of Betsy Fahlman, New Deal Art in Arizona (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009), American Studies 50, nos. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2009): 178–9.
Book Review of Kathleen A. Foster, Nanette Esseck Brewer, and Margaret Contompasis, Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), Indiana Magazine of History 98, no. 2 (2002): 145–7.
Book Review of Thomas Dublin and Melissa Doak, Miner’s Son, Miner’s Photographer: The Life and Work of George Harvan (The Journal of Multimedia History 3, 2000), Labor History 43, no. 3 (August 2002): 385–6.
Book Review of Darden Asbury Pyron, Liberace: An American Boy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), The Journal of American History 88, no. 2 (September 2001): 733–4.
Book Review of Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900–2000, eds. Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, and Ilene Susan Fort (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), Journal of the West 40, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 97.
Book Review of Michael Brenson, Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Artist in America (New York: The New Press, 2001), Archives of American Art Journal 41, nos. 1–4 (2001): 50–5.
Book Review of David Craven, Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique: Dissent During the McCarthy Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), caa.reviews (posted October 1999): online.
Book Review of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Winterthur Portfolio 34, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1999): 178–82.
Book Review of Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 289–95.
Book Review of Stuart D. Hobbs, The End of the American Avant Garde (New York: New York University Press, 1997), The Journal of American History 84, no. 4 (March 1998): 1581.
“Not Just a Guy's Club Anymore,” Book Review Essay of Ann Eden Gibson, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), American Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1998): 840–8.
Book Review of Robert L. Dorman, Revolt of the Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), American Studies 35, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 148–9.
Book Review of Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture, Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), Woman's Art Journal 15, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1994): 43–5.
Book Review of Stephen Polcari, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), The Journal of American History 79, no. 4 (March 1993): 1670–1.
Book Review of Ellen Wiley Todd, The "New Woman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Winterthur Portfolio 28, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1993): 204–7.