Lisa Seppi

My scholarly interests and professional experiences as an educator and museum curator have contributed to my dedication to equipping students with a broad knowledge of art and design history and the skills needed to work in various art-related fields. I offer particular expertise in 20th and 21st century art, with an emphasis in European-American and Indigenous art, as well as possess in-depth knowledge and experience with museum practices. My research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary and include contemporary art and theory, Native American art, phenomenological theories of embodiment and perception, the history of craft traditions, modernism, and race and gender studies. I also have considerable experience teaching, including traditional lecture, hybrid or flipped classrooms, and online instruction, along with program administration, curriculum and program development and assessment, and student advising and mentoring. I began my career with the idealistic, if not slightly naive goal of wanting to instill in people a love for art and the awareness that all great cultures having thriving artistic communities that they pay attention to. I am pleased to say that my commitment to that goal has never wavered-- it is still a worthy ideal!

Professor Seppi has worked as a museum consultant for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, the American Federation of the Arts in NYC, and The Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan. She has also worked as a manuscript reviewer for University of Oklahoma Press, University of Washington Press, the College Art Association's Art Journal, and serves as the Art History Subject Editor for the American Journal of Undergraduate Research (AJUR).

Research 

Most of my work to date has been dedicated to expanding the scope and definition of American art to include artists, formerly restricted to marginalized discussions of non-western art, within the fold of American art history as key contributors to its aesthetic development and history. Drawing upon research conducted as a Henry Luce Foundation/ ACLS Dissertation Fellowship recipient wherein I recontextualized the work of Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick within the larger discourse of western art history (of landscape painting, the metaphysics of modernism, feminist art history and body art), my recent research has been focused on two related interests. The first research project acknowledges the presence and the impact of an indigenous artistic practice at the very core of modernism and thus the transcultural condition of global art. This research has culminated in conference presentations and publications that looks at contemporary Haudenosaunee art involving real and virtual beadwork and also in what I term post-modern allegorical Indigenous painting. The second project explores the materials, techniques, and objects related to domesticity and craft (both contemporary and historic) in the work of various artists, like Hannah Claus, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Jeffrey Gibson, and the issues – gendered, cultural, political, and aesthetic – raised by their use.

Publications 

Recent publications include:

• “The Artist in Italy: Desire, the Body and the Divine,” in Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., 2015 
• “Postmodern Allegory in Native American Painting,” in Double Desire: Transcultural and Indigenous Contemporary Art, ed. Ian McLean, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014

Conferences 

Professor Seppi regularly presents peer-reviewed research papers at various scholarly conferences including but not limited to: “Making Connections Across the Divide: Indigenous Aesthetics, Craft Traditions, and the Legacy of Western Modernism,” College Art Association Conference, New York, New York (February 2019), “The ARTiface of American Modernism: restoring the multidimensional narrative of American art history,” Native American Art Studies Association Conference, Tulsa, Oklahoma (October 2017), “The Art of Kay WalkingStick: Desire, the Body and the Divine,” Rebirth of Images Conference: A Global Dialogue on Spirituality and the Arts, Marsha Powell Festival of Religion and Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (April 2015), “Jeffrey Gibson’s Nomadic Modernism: mediating indigenous, western, and global visual identity,” Borders and Contact Zones in the Americas, 13th Conference on the Americas, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan (March 2015), and "Virtual Beads: Real and Represented Beadwork as Cultural Signifier in Contemporary Haudenosaunee Art,” Native American & Indigenous Studies Association Conference, Austin, Texas, (May 2014). . 

Awards and honors 

In addition to having been awarded various SUNY Oswego research grants including but not limited to Scholarly and Creative Activities awards and an Open Education Resource Grant, Professor Seppi has also been the recipient of Faculty Development awards that, most recently, allowed her to participate in the CAPA Institute program in Florence, Italy.

Performances and exhibitions 

Professor Seppi has curated exhibitions including but not limited to: Hannah Claus: In/Tangible Presence, Tyler Art Gallery, State University of New York, September 7 – October 6, 2012. In addition she has also presented invited lectures to accompany national and international artist exhibitions such as: “With Love to Rome: Art, Memory, and Mythology,” Seizing the Sky: Redefining American Art, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., November, 2015 (view at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtdMqTrWeK4) and “Virtual Beads: Real and Represented Beadwork as Cultural Signifier in Contemporary Haudenosaunee Art,” Iroquois Visual Arts: Tradition, Innovation, Representation, Martin-Gropius Museum, Berlin, Germany, November 2013. 

Education 

• Ph.D. Art History, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana