Touba Ghadessi
Assistant Professor of Art History
Degrees
Ph.D., M.A., Northwestern University
B.A., Trinity University
Main Interests
Monsters in the early modern period
History of anatomy
Gender definitions and gender ambiguity between 1400 and 1800
Ruling figures and vexed visualizations of power
Research Interests
I am currently working on a book manuscript titled Courting Monstrosity: The Spectacular Body in Early Modern Portraiture. This book focuses on the ways in which human monstrousness and physical deformity have been historically represented, categorized, and interpreted in the various Italian and French courts of the late Renaissance. At the center of this interdisciplinary study are the court monsters – dwarves, hirsutes, and misshapen individuals – who, by their very presence, altered Renaissance ethics vis-à-vis anatomical difference, social virtues, scientific knowledge, and the art theoretical discourse on portraiture.
Teaching Interests
ARTH 111 Arts of the Western Tradition
ARTH 242 Patronage and the Artist in Early Modern Italy
ARTH 243 Early Modern Spaces
ARTH 244 Baroque Art
ARTH 311 Anatomies 1400-1600: Sexual, Forbidden and Monstrous
ARTH 398 Ruling Families of the Renaissance
ARTH 401 The Art of Collecting
ARTH 401 The Boundaries of Portraiture
Other Interests
The New England Renaissance Conference (November 2011)
