2025 KU History of Art Graduate Student Symposium Symbiosis: Art and Ecologies in Global Perspectives
This year’s symposium, titled “Symbiosis: Art and Ecologies in Global Perspectives,” will take place on November 7–8, 2025. On November 7, Dr. Sugata Ray, Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver a keynote lecture. On November 8, graduate students from KU and other universities will present their research in four thematic panels: Space, Violence and Memory, Agency, and Decoloniality.
2025 KU History of Art Graduate Student Symposium
Symbiosis: Art and Ecologies in Global Perspectives
Keynote Lecture
Friday, November 7, 2025, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Spencer Museum of Art 211
Enter through the west doors of the SMA; free parking is available in Lot 91 behind the SMA after 5 p.m.
“From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612”
Dr. Sugata Ray, Associate Professor, History of Art and South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Symposium
Saturday, November 8, 2025, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Kansas Memorial Union, Mallot Room, 6th floor
9:30-9:40 am. Opening
9:40-11:00 am Panel 1: Space
“Light, Space, and Environment: Los Angeles Installation Art in the 1970s” Emily Leifer, Ph.D. candidate, Bryn Mawr College
“From Sen to Symbiosis: Disentangling the Ecological in the Contemporary Tea Houses of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tom Sachs” Eli Troen, M.A. student, University of Kansas
“Reconfiguring Hwasŏng through Landscape Ecology and Water Management Perspectives” Haejeong Yoon, Ph.D. candidate, University of Kansas
10:40-11:00 am Q&A
11:00-11:10 am Break
11:10-12:30 pm Panel 2: Violence and Memory
“Post-pastoral Landscape after the Cold War: Case Study on Kang Yong Suk’s Maehyang-ri Landscape (1999)” Arial Youngin Kim, Ph.D. student, University of Kansas
“Grada Kilomba, Isabel Tueumuna Katjavivi and Ibrahim Mahama’s Works of Contemporary Memory Art and Entangled Ecological Violence” Emily Shoyer, Ph.D. candidate, Bryn Mawr College
“Worldmaking as Remedy: The Visual Culture of Southern Shanxi in North China after the 1303 Earthquake” Lucien Sun, Ph.D. candidate, University of Chicago
12:10-12:30 pm. Q&A
12:30-2:00 pm Lunch Break (Kansas Room, 6th floor, Kansas Union)
2:00-3:20 pm Panel 3: Agency
“Slabs, Seams, and Survival: Rose B. Simpson’s Symbiotic Claywork” Madalyn Fox, M.A. student, Case Western Reserve University
“SYMBIOSIS: Reclaiming Photography's Ecological ‘Road Not Taken’” Valeria Iacovelli, Ph.D. candidate, University of Maryland-College Park
“Anicka Yi: Critique of Alien Reason” Mitchell Herrmann, Ph.D. candidate, Yale University
3:00-3:20 pm Q&A
3:20-3:30 pm Break
3:30-4:50 pm Panel 4: Decoloniality
“Commodified Landscapes: Tourism and Extraction of Kŭmgangsan under Japanese Rule (1910-1945)” Heeryun Suh, M.A. student, University of Kansas
“Sonya Noskowiak’s Cypress Detail and the Settler Colonialist Impacts of the Cypress Tree” Chloe Richardson, M.A., University of Denver
“Abalone Futurism: Iridescent Art in Native California” Reilly Clark, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Santa Barbara
4:30-4:50 pm Q&A
4:50-4:55 pm Closing & Photo Session