Listen "“To Give Shape to a Way of Seeing the Past”: Shira Brisman on the Intimacy of Writing the History of Social Art"
Episode Synopsis
In this continuation of a season focused on the craft of writing in art history, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks to Shira Brisman, a historian of early modern art and assistant professor of the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania. Through the lens of her two books, the first on Albrecht Dürer, and the second, forthcoming, on the goldsmith Christoph Jamnitzer (1563–1618), Brisman explores how art can shape communities, and can either draw people together or divide them. She discusses the idea of a “craft” of writing, the impact of poetry on her own prose, and how an “off stage bibliography” can provide a generative set of thematic, linguistic, and structural alternatives that amplify one’s understanding of their own scholarly writing projects.
More episodes of the podcast In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing
The Evidentiary and the Black Body
21/10/2025
Creole in the Archive
14/10/2025
Connoisseurship and the Work of Naming
07/10/2025
Fashion and the Construction of Race
30/09/2025
Curating History and Race
23/09/2025
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