Claudia Marion Stemberger
Modern and contemporary arts in Africa
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Education
M.A., Art History, Duke University, USA
Mag.phil., Art History, University of Vienna, Austria
M.A.S., Arts Management, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
M.D., Human Medicine, University of Graz, Austria
Research Interests
Claudia Marion Stemberger's growing field of expertise is African modernist and contemporary arts in a global perspective. She concentrates on African visual arts of the pre- / post-independence years, especially during and after the apartheid regime. Undertaking her academic writing as non-indigenous / non-Black / non-African, she acknowledges that she embodies an outsider positionality within the respective system(s) of knowledge.
Biography
Claudia Marion Stemberger has received her education in diverse art histories across continents and languages. Her graduate education has been supported by prestigious grants. At McGill University, she held the Abner Kingman Fellowship (awarded to an incoming humanities student on the basis of academic excellence) and also the Graduate Excellence Fellowship. While at Duke University, she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Student Field Research Grant, and a Robert K. Steel Family Graduate Fellowship. Her peer-reviewed article, “Teaching Back: Towards a Decolonized Pedagogy of Art History in South Africa,” was recommended for publication in the journal Muséologies. Furthermore, her article “South African Live Art and the Representation of its Residue,” was included in an academic anthology. Her essay, “Doing Diversity in Art History,” is forthcoming in the South African journal Image & Text. She was also the editor of the first ever publication on performance art in South Africa, as part of her curatorial project Alterating Conditions in Johannesburg in 2011. She has served as academic reviewer for Safundi–The Journal of South African and American Studies. Moreover, until 2021, she served on the Committee on Diversity Practices of the College Art Association (USA).
www.artandtheory.net
Current Research Projects
Claudia Marion Stemberger studies towards her Ph.D. in Art History, under the supervision of Dr. Ikem S. Okoye. In her future dissertation, she hopes to examine women artists of the African continent, specifically South Africa in the context of art education under apartheid. In her research, she tries to reflect on her position as an ally, advocating an Africa-centred position from the global south. The contribution she hopes to make in the discipline is one that should advance art history towards decolonial, indigenous, and inclusive approaches.
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