People

Mariana R. Wardwell (aka Mariana Botey) is Associate Professor in the the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where she specializes in modern and contemporary Latino American art history. Wardwell is a founding member of the editorial and curatorial committee of The Red Specter: a phantasmal, agitation, and conspiratorial organization working at the intersection of art, politics and theory. The Red Specter is based in Mexico City and is at the center of a wide web of international collaborations with artist, critics, designers and curators. 

Alena J. Williams is Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. Her research areas include the history and theory of modern and contemporary art, media, and film; the epistemology of the image; and theories of modernity. She is the curator of Nancy Holt: Sightlines, an international traveling exhibition for the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University (2010-13) and has published a companion book with the University of California Press (2011). 

Alum Student Members


Katrin Pesch, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice, 2016


Tim Ridlen, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice, 2017


Kristen Gallerneaux, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice, 2017


Lara Bullock, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism


Sascha Crasnow, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, 2018


Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, 2018


Melinda Guillen, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism, 2019


Catherine Czacki, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a concentration in Art Practice, 2019


Jaekyung Jung, Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a concentration in Art Practice, 2019