I am a scholar of modern art and a historian of photography. My research interests include French Symbolism, artist’s books, transgender phenomena in art, and depictions of the African diaspora in Europe. I am currently at work on a book project, tentatively entitled Savage Whiteness: Paul Gauguin and the Birth of Modernism.
I received my doctorate in art history and a certificate in women’s studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and my bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College. My research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the CUNY Graduate Center, the NEA Foundation, and the Van Gogh Museum.
I have been invited to present my research to general and academic audiences at the New York Public Library and the Program in Gender and Sexualities Studies at Princeton University. I have spoken widely at national and international conferences, including the Association for Art History, the College Art Association, the International Comparative Literature Association, and the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, among others.
I teach courses on European art with a focus on the eighteenth through the early-twentieth centuries. I am currently a part-time assistant professor at the City College of New York, where I teach art history courses as a member of the Art Department. Prior to joining City College, I taught at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, Cooper Union, Parsons School of Design, Queens College and Queensborough Community College. In 2022, I was awarded a teaching prize from the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
My name is pronounced / ˈæɹən slʌ-dʌv-nɪk / and I go by “he”. I have been a New Yorker for over 20 years and live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan with my spouse and two children. I grew up in central Illinois; my mother was a ceramic artist and my father was a photojournalist. When I’m not thinking about art or family, I’m daydreaming about the course I’ll take one day at the WoodenBoat School.