Elisabeth Roark

  

• Assistant Professor
• Chatham University

I am an assistant professor of art history committed to the importance of the humanities for living a rich and full life. I am an advocate for the liberal arts and their continuing relevance at a time when it seems they are being attacked on all sides. I believe the university is a place to be educated, not simply prepared for a job. I hope that an increased integration of technology in my classwork and research will help me further advance these ideas. My research and teaching involves close interrogation of art objects within their distinctive contexts. While I am a generalist who teaches broad surveys of world art, period courses from the Renaissance to Contemporary, and special topics course on Women and Art, the Carnegie International, Art and Land, and Death and Culture, my research focuses on colonial and nineteenth-century American art, particularly portraiture, genre painting, images of artists and issues of professionalization, and cemetery design, memorialization, and grave markers.