My research investigates how the environment shapes individual and collective identity, and how art mediates and preserves those processes. Whether examining early modern Netherlandish landscapes or nineteenth-century representations of the American West, I am interested in how artists have translated shifting relationships between people and place into visual form. By tracing these connections across time and geography, I seek to illuminate how art constructs narratives of place—both real and imagined—and how those narratives continue to shape perceptions of history and the environment today.
Dissertation (in-progress)
My dissertation, Geomyths in Early Netherlandish Landscapes, c. 1500–1600, examines how painters such as Joachim Patinir, Herri met de Bles, and Lucas van Valckenborch engaged with the geomythic imagination of the Ardennes—a region of striking geological formations and deep cultural memory. Rather than inventing fantastical landscapes, these painters integrated local legends, environmental knowledge, and emerging natural philosophy into a new form of landscape imagery. Through case studies of Patinir’s devotional landscapes, Bles’s mining scenes, and Van Valckenborch’s renderings of the Meuse Valley, my dissertation recovers the cultural and environmental knowledge embedded in these works. It offers a framework for understanding early landscape paintings not just as artistic inventions, but as part of a broader effort to make sense of the natural world through history, myth, and material experience.
Academic Publications
“Geomythology and the Meuse Valley: Natural Landmarks in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Landscapes,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (forthcoming, 2025).
This essay explores the cultural topography of the Meuse Valley to consider its role in the production and reception of landscape paintings by Joachim Patinir and Herri met de Bles.
Research Collaborations
Watermark Identification in Rembrandt’s Etchings (WIRE) Project
As an undergraduate at Cornell University, I contributed to this interdisciplinary project, which applied algorithmic analysis to the identification of watermarks in Rembrandt’s prints. By refining classification techniques, WIRE provided a new technical approach to understanding Rembrandt’s working methods, culminating in the publication Lines of Inquiry (2017).
French-American Bridge for Medieval Musical Iconography (FAB-Musiconis)
As part of this collaboration between Columbia University and Sorbonne Université, I helped to develop new methods for cataloging medieval images of music-making, uniting historical and technical approaches. The project combined art history, musicology, and computer science to analyze and classify musical iconography.
