Adriana Zavala, Ph.d. - Tufts University

Tufts University
Department of Art and Art History
11 Talbot Avenue Medford, MA 02155
Adriana Zavala, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Office: 617-627-2423
fax 617-627-3890
Adriana.Zavala@Tufts.edu
Education
Ph.D. 2001 Brown University, Art History
Dissertation: “Constituting the Indian/Female Body in Mexican Painting, Cinema and
Visual Culture, 1900-1950.” Advisors: Kermit Champa, K. Dian Driz, R. Douglas Cope
M.A. 1996 Brown University, Art History
B.A. 1988 University of Cincinnati, Art History
Professional Experience
2010-2011 Guest Co-Curator, “Lola Álvarez Bravo y la fotografía de una época,” temporary
exhibition, Estudio Diego Rivera, Mexico City
2010 Guest Curator, "Mexico Beyond Its Revolution," temporary exhibition, Koppelman
Gallery, Tufts University
2010 Interim Director, Latin American Studies Program, Tufts University
2009-present Director, Latino Studies minor, Tufts University
2008-present Associate Professor, Tufts University, Dept. of Art and Art History
Fields of Specialization: Modern and Contemporary Mexican and Latin American Art;
Latin American Cinema; Latino/a and Chicano/a Art
2001-2008 Assistant Professor, Tufts University, Dept. of Art and Art History
2007 Guest Curator, "Un Arte Nuevo: El Aporte de María Izquierdo," temporary exhibition,
Andrés Blaisten Collection/Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, 2007.
Fellowships, Grants and Honors
2011 Association of Latin American Arvey Art book award for Becoming Modern, Becoming
Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art (Penn State University
Press, 2010)
2007 Tufts University, Faculty Research Award
2006 Tufts University, Junior Faculty Semester Research Leave
2004-05 National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Fellowship
2004 Tufts University Mellon Faculty Research Fellowship (declined)
2001 Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University.
Marie J. Langlois Prize, outstanding dissertation in feminist studies
2001 Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, N.Y., Research Grant-in-Aid
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2000-01 Brown University Graduate School, Robert Gale Noyes Fellowship
1998-99 J. William Fulbright/García Robles, Dissertation Research Fellowship, Mexico
1999 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowships for Minorities, Honorable Mention
1996-97 U.S. Department of Education/Brown University, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship
(FLAS)
Publications
Books
Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art, examines
the relationship between images of women, nationalism and modernism in Mexico City between 1850-
1950, (Penn State University Press, 2010). Awarded book prize, Association of Latin American Art, 2011.
Reviewed by Alison Fraunhar for Woman’s Art Journal (Spring/Summer 2011), pp. 59-61.
Book projects in preparation
“Inventive Geographies: Mexico City in the Artistic Imagination,” examines images of Mexico City
produced from the 1940s through the present in art and cinema.
"The Feminine Photographic Eye in Mexico," examines the work of women photographers in Mexico
from 1900 to the present.
Articles
Peer Reviewed
"Mexico City in Juan O'Gorman's Imagination," Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 5, December 2007,
491-506.
“De Santa a la India Bonita,” in María Teresa Fernández Aceves, Carmen Ramos Escandón and Susie S.
Porter, (eds.), Orden social e identidad de género. México siglos XIX y XX, Guadalajara, CIESAS-
Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006, 149-187.
Invited
"Frida Kahlo's Mi Muñeca y yo (1937)," in Frida Kahlo. Homenaje Nacional. 1907-2007. Mexico City:
CONACULTA/INBA and Editorial RM, 2007, 172-177.
“Los cuerpos de María Izquierdo y los debates culturales de los años 30,” in Miradas disidentes: géneros
y sexo en la historia del arte: XXIX Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte, editor Alberto Dallal
Castillo, Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas,
2007.
“Tamayo’s Women. Figures of an Alternative Modernism,” in Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted,
Diana C. du Pont, editor. Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2007, 201-223. Spanish
language edition: "Las mujeres de Tamayo: figuras de un arte moderno alternativo."
“Mexico City: Context and Resonance,” in Art New England, October-November 2006, 9, 59.
“María Izquierdo,” in Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, eds. The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation
and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006, 67-79.
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“The India Bonita Beauty Contest: Gender, Modernity and Tradition in Mexico City, 1921,” in Seeing and
Beyond: Essays on 18th-21st Century Art in Honor of Kermit S. Champa, Deborah Johnson and David
Ogawa, eds. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2005, 277-306.
Exhibition Catalogs
Mexico Beyond Its Revolution/México más allá de su revolución. Medford, MA: Tufts University Art
Gallery, 2010.
Un Arte Nuevo: El Aporte de María Izquierdo/A New Art: The Contribution of María Izquierdo.
Exhibition catalog. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2008.
Catalog Entries
“María Izquierdo,” and “José Clemente Orozco,” in Blanton Museum of Art: Latin American Collection,
Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006, 237-239, 306-310.
Multiple entries in Arte Moderno de México: Colección Andrés Blaisten, James Oles, ed. Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2005, 86, 99, 104, 132, 134, 144, 146, 179, 200, 214, 232, 240,
245, 262-63, 292, 302, 304, 306, 324-25, 350, 352, 360, 378, 382, 386-88.
Book Reviews
Looking for Mexico. Modern Visual Culture and National Identity. By John Mraz (Duke University Press, 2009) in
Visual Resources. An International Journal of Documentation, forthcoming.
The Language of Objects in the Art of the Americas. By Edward J. Sullivan (Yale University Press, 2007), in
caareviews.org, College Art Association.
Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920 to 1950. By John Ittmann; with
contributions by Innis Howe Shoemaker, James M. Wechsler, and Lyle W. Williams. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia
Museum of Art / San Antonio: McNay Art Museum / New Haven: in association with Yale University Press, 2006)
in Hispanic American Historical Review 89(2): 371-373 (2009), 371-373.
Tina Modotti by Letizia Argentieri (Yale University Press, 2004), in VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, 17.2
(2006), 152-155.
The Effects of the Nation. Mexican Art in an Age of Globalization, edited by Carl Good and John V. Waldron
(Temple University Press, 2001) in Hispanic American Historical Review, 83.3 (2003), 590-591.
Lectures in Symposia
2010 "Visualizing Revolution: From Pretty Indians to Epidermic Mexicanism," Conference, "The 100 th
Anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
2008 "The "Enormous Vogue" of Things Kahlo," Center for the Humanities, Tufts University.
2008 College Art Association Annual Conference, Dallas, TX:
Paper title: "Technology as Metaphor and Medium: Mexico City as Subject in the work of Francis
Alÿs, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Melanie Smith.”
2007 XXXI Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte: El Futuro. Instituto de Investigaciones
Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Oaxaca, , Mexico: Paper title, "De la
transparencia a la opacidad: la imagen de la ciudad de México como geografía moralizante.”
2005 XXIX Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte: Miradas disidentes. Géneros y sexo en la
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historia del arte, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, Puebla, Mexico: Paper title, “María Izquierdo’s Bodies and the Cultural Debates of the
1930s."
2003 II Coloquio Internacional de Historia de las Mujeres y de Género, Guadalajara,
Mexico: Paper title, “From Santa to the India Bonita and Back Again."
Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Conference, Dallas, Texas:
Paper title, “The Aesthetic and the Poetic: Gender and “Pure” Painting in Mexico City in the
1930s."
2002 College Art Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA:
Paper title, “The India Bonita Contest and the Re-Constitution of Post-Revolutionary
Mexican Femininity: Tradition, Authenticity and Desire."
1999 College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA:
Paper title, “Emilio Fernandez’ "The Pearl. Mexican Golden Age Film: Cinematic Equivalents of
Mexican Mural Painting."
Conference Panels Chaired or Moderated
2012 Discussant, American Historical Association, panel “Women in Mexican Visual Arts,” chaired by
Dr. Eli Bartra, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Chicago, IL
2010 Mexico Its Revolution and Beyond, co-organizer, Tufts University, Program in Latin American
Studies.
2009 College Art Association, Los Angeles, CA. Panel Chair/co-Chair with Mary K. Coffey,
Dartmouth College, "Revisiting the Latin Boom: A Round-Table Discussion."
2004 A Gathering of Voices: Latino Studies and Pedagogies for Building Communities,
Tufts University: Panel Chair, “Latino Identity Performance. What and For Whom?”
2003 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Conference, Dallas, Texas:
Panel co-chair, “Americanism and Cosmopolitanism in Modern Latin American Art."
College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY:
Panel Discussant, “Immigrant Artists in (We)stern Cities: A Contemporary Other,” Sunanda
Sanyal, Art Institute of Boston, session chair.
2002 Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, R.I.: Panel Discussant, “Art Made in
Crisis,” in conjunction with exhibition Crisis Response.
Invited Lectures
2011 Wheaton College, Norton, MA. Department of Hispanic Studies, "Becoming Modern, Becoming
Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art."
2010 Women's Studies Faculty Colloquium, Tufts University, "Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition:
Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art."
DePaul University, Chicago, IL. Department of Art History, "Becoming Modern, Becoming
Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in Mexican Art."
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University of Louisville and Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky., Allen R. Hite Memorial Lecture:
"Intimate Encounters: Mexican Modernists and the Female Nude."
University of Cincinnati, College of Design Architecture, Art and Planning, program in art
history, "Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender and Representation in
Mexican Art."
2009 Primary Source, Watertown, MA (K-12 teacher training workshop), "Memory, Tradition and
Political Consciousness in Latin American Art Today."
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, "Mexican Painting at the Crossroads of Politics, Culture and
Expression."
Wellesley College, Art Department, "The Changing Face of Mexico City in the 1940s and 1950s."
Northeastern University and New England Conservatory, Boston GuitarFest 2009, "Frida Kahlo
and Diego Rivera."
Tufts University, Office of Institutional Diversity, "Research and Pedagogy in Inequality and
Difference: Power and Images."
2008 Primary Source, Watertown, MA (K-12 teacher training workshop), "Muralism and Social
Expression."
2007 Rhode Island School of Design Museum, "Mexico City as Global Art Capital."
University of Texas at Austin, Department of Art History "From Transparency to Opacity: Mexico
City as Moralized Geography."
Dartmouth College, Department of Art History, "Mexico City or "Entropy Made Visible," in the
Art of Juan O'Gorman, Diego Rivera, Francis Alÿs and Melanie Smith."
2005 Wellesley College, Art Department: “María Izquierdo and Pure Art in 1930s Mexico."
2004 Brown University, Department of Art and Architectural History: “Mexico City as Contact Zone."
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, Viewpoints Series: “Landscapes and Cityscapes in
Modern Mexican Art and Cinema."
2003 Women's Studies Faculty Colloquium, Tufts University, “The India Bonita Beauty Contest:
Gender, Modernity and Tradition in Mexico City, 1921."
Harvard University Art Museums/Victor M. Leventritt Lecture on Latin America Art:
“María Izquierdo and the Body of Woman in 1930s Mexico City."
2001 State University of New York, Stonybrook, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies:
“María Izquierdo and the Body of Woman."
2000 Wayne State University, Department of Art and Art History, Detroit, Michigan:
“Frida Kahlo and María Izquierdo. Appropriating and Resisting Indian Identity."
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Peer Review (Service to the Field)
2008 Academic Reviewer, University of New Mexico Press, book manuscript: "Desencanto: Mexican
Figurative Painting and Patronage in the 1980s."
Academic Reviewer, RedLine editorial, book manuscript: "Essential Lives: Frida Kahlo."
2006 Academic Reviewer, International Union of Academies, Brussels, publication grant proposal:
“Corpus of Mexican Paintings,” Ida Rodriguez Prampolini et. al.
2005 Academic Reviewer, Aurora. Journal of the History of Art, article: "Between the Graphic and
Tectonic: Architecture, Mapping and Topography in Rimer Cardillo's Works."
2004 Academic Reviewer, Prentice Hall, book manuscript: “Latin American Art: Portraits in Time,
1810-2003."
Consulting
2012 Curatorial and Museum Education programming and interpretation, High Museum of Art,
Atlanta, GA. Exhibition of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
Teaching and Advising
Current courses: Introduction to Latin American Art; 20 th -century Mexican Art; Contemporary Mexican
Art; Colonial Mexican Art and Architecture; Gender in Latin American Art; Latin American Cinema;
Latino Presence in Art and Visual Culture; Seminar: Latin American Art in Exhibition; Seminar: Post-
Revolutionary Mexican and Chicano Art in Comparative Perspective; Seminar: Surrealism in Latin
America; Seminar: The Cityscape in Latin American Art; Seminar: Mexico City in the Artistic
Imagination; Art, Ritual, and Culture (departmental survey course coordinator, 2010)
Dissertation Committees
Mary Schneider Enriquez, Ph.D. General Exam Committee, Harvard University, 2005
Jamie Ratliff, Ph.D. General Exam and Dissertation Committee, University Louisville, 2007 - ongoing
M.A. Theses Directed
Priscilla Bolaños Salas, “Artists and the Argentine Dirty War,” 2012.
Gabrielle Bridgeford, "Face Value: The Ambivalence of Ethnographic Representation in
Latin America," May 2004.
Jason Hill, "Exhibition as Wedge: The Information Show at the Museum of Modern Art,"
May 2004.
M.A. Qualifying Papers Directed
Laura Conover, “Diego Rivera at the MoMA: Defining American Modern Art in 1931-1932,” Dec. 2011
Jennifer Cohen, “The Paradox of the National: Globalization and Contemporary Mexican Cinema,”
May 2010
Anna Stothart, "Re-Visualizing Testimony: A Examination of Violence in the work of Doris Salcedo,
Mona Hatoum, Luis Camnitzer and Paul Stopforth," May 2009
Carolyn Grosch, "Confronting and Collaborating with Power: the Behavior Art of Tania Bruguera," May
2009
Katie Deatley-Peluso, "Felix González Torres and the Subversion of Identity," May 2009
Teresa DiCureia, "The Novecento in Argentina: Figuration and the Avant Garde, 1924-1940," December
2008.
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Anna Stothart, "Negotiating Racial Identity: An Examination of the Work of Adrian Paper, Ana Mendieta,
Lyle Ashton Harris and Nikki S. Lee," December 2008.
Nina Bozicnik, "Interrogating the Monolith: The Politics, Motivations, and Implications of Crafting a
Usable Culture and Identity in Mexican Chicago," May 2008
Jennifer Crosson, "City Planning and Casta Painting in New Spain," May 2008
John Tyson, "Graffiti: An Investigation of an Art of Everyday Life," May 2008
Nina Bozicnik, "Unveiling the Present, Looking Through the Past: Los Carpinteros and the
Social/Aesthetic Dialectic in the Early 1990s," December 2007
Nicole Evans, "A Look at Contemporary Cuban Photography and Collective Memory," December 2007
Joanna Groarke, "More Cuban than the People in Cuba": The Diaspora Art of José Bedia."
May 2006.
Emily Schreiner, "From the Culture Wars to Postcolonialism: Strategies for Presenting Latin
American, Latino and Chicano Art," December 2004.
Courtney Gerber, "Shades of the Past Reveal Our Shady Present: "Race" in America According
to Kara Walker," May 2004.
Stacy Pyron, "Gender Defined: Diego Rivera and Images of the Mexican Revolution at the
Secretaría de Educación Pública," May 2004.
Chloe Zaug, "Ernesto Neto and Vic Muniz: A Closer Look at the International Art Circuit,"
May 2004.
John Corso, "Stitch, Suture, and Pattern in Mola Visual Culture," May 2003.
Lisa Silberstein, "Is it A Maestrapeace?" May 2003
Annie Loechle, "The Sight of Silence: Recovering the Soldaderas from the Casasola's
Myth," December 2002.
Jamie Ratliff, "A Display of Feminism: Curatorial Challenges and the Development of
Feminism in Mexico," December 2002.
Liz Kelton, "Definitions of Otherness: Ethnography and Surrealism in the Work of Graciela
Iturbide," May 2002.
Almitra Stanley, "Erasing the Brush of Anguish: Construction of the Self in the Work of
Frida Kahlo," May 2002.
Undergraduate Honors Theses Directed
Chloe Zimmerman (Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Honors Thesis), "Spaces for Memory ~ Espacios Para
la Memoria: Representing Absence in the Peruvian Landscape," August 2009
School of Arts and Sciences, Advising
M.F.A. Tufts/Museum School Thesis Review Board Advisor, 2001-present
Advisees in Dept. of Art History, undergraduate and M.A. program
Reader and Advisor of American Studies Senior Theses, and American Studies Senior Special Projects,
2002-present
Director, Senior Thesis, Center for Media Studies, 2004
Freshman pre-major advisor, 2002 to present
Curriculum innovation:
Faculty Steering Committee, American Studies Program, 2007-present
Co-Coordinator, Latino/a Curriculum Transformation Project, 2003-4
Grant Recipient, Critical Thinking Program, Tufts University, FAH64 Latin American Cinema,
fall 2002
Faculty Participant, Undergraduate Writing Fellows Program, FAH007 Introduction to Latin
American Art, fall 2002
University Committees and Service
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Department of Art and Art History
Committee on Undergraduate Major in Art History, 2005-present
Department Transfer of Credit Advisor, 2005-2009
M.A. Admissions Committee in Art History, spring 2004, spring 2007, spring 2008
Department Representative, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs and Policy
Committee, fall 2005.
Search Committee, Africanist Art Historian, 2002-2003, 2003-04
Invited/coordinated guest lecturers and events in Latin American and Feminist Art, American Studies
and Latino Studies, 2001-present
University-wide
Director, Latino Studies Minor
Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT), faculty board, 2007-ongoing
Equal Educational Opportunity Committee, 2008-2013; co-chair 2011-ongoing
Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, 2007-2010
American Studies, Artist-in-Residence, program co-coordinator, 2007, 2009
American Studies Faculty Steering Committee, 2002-present
Women’s Studies Program and Faculty Committee, 2003 to present
Latin American Studies Major, Faculty Committee, 2001 to present
Faculty reviewer and moderator, Women's Studies Forum, "Beyond the Classroom," 2003, 2007, 2008
Synthesis, 2006, Guest Presentation on Research and Teaching, High School Counselor
Immersion Program, Office of Undergraduate Admissions
"Tufts in the World," Cultural liaison and tour leader in Mexico City for Tufts International
Board of Overseers, November 2004
Faculty Workshop on Teaching Diverse Student Populations, spring 2002
Professional Organizations and Volunteer Activities
College Art Association (CAA)
Association for Latin American Art (ALAA)
Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
Latin American Studies Association, Track Chair “Art, Art History and Architecture,”
International Congress, Dallas, Texas, 2003.
Board of Directors, Friends of the Library, Brown University, 2003-2006
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