Annie Ronan
- she/her
Annie Ronan is an assistant professor of art history at Virginia Tech, where she offers courses on modern and contemporary art. A specialist in the art and material culture of the United States, her research to date has focused on animals and animality in late-nineteenth-century American art. Her writing has appeared in American Art, Archives of American Art Journal, and Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. Her current book project investigates the racial politics of animal art in Gilded Age America.
American Art and Material Culture, Animal Studies, Ecocriticism, New Materialism, Global Nineteenth-Century
ART 3584: Nineteenth-Century Art: Neo-Classicism to Post-Impressionism
ART 3674: History of Photography
ART 3684: African American Art
ART 3784: European and American Art Since 1900
ART 3884: American Art to 1914
ART 4384/5384: Exhibiting the American West
ART 4384/5384: Women in Contemporary Art
ART 4384/5384: Art of the Natural History Museum
ART 4384/5384: Art Histories of the Future
ART 4484/5204: Research Methods in Art History and Material Culture Studies
Publications
“In Conversation: Teaching with Primary Sources” The Archives of American Art Journal 61, no. 2 (Fall 2022)
“Animals, Anthropocentrism, and Antiracism in American Art” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 6, no. 2 (Fall 2020)
“Petting Billy: Albert Laessle’s Significant Other(ness).” in Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture edited by Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart (New York: Routledge, 2019)
“Capturing Cruelty: Camera Hunting, Water Hounding, and Winslow Homer’s Adirondack Deer.” American Art 31, no. 3 (Fall 2017)
Astley D. M. Cooper & Mrs. Stanford’s Jewels. Stanford, CA: Cantor Arts Center, 2015.
Selected Presentations
“An African American Animalier in the Lions’ Den: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Animal Studies” La Vache, Le Cheval et la Lionne, Etre Artiste, Femme, et Vivre Avec les Animaux Au XIX Siècle: Colloque a l’Occasion de L’Exposition ‘Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), Musée D’Orsay, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris, France, 2023)
“Queer, Isn’t It: Race, Sexuality, Species and Feces in the Portrait of Mr. Remus Crowley, Chimpanzee” College Art Association Annual Conference (New York, NY, 2023)
“Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Un-Suppressed Color: Animal Art, Animal Materials, and the Flesh of Painting” Southeastern College Art Conference (Richmond, VA, 2020) “Mr. Crowley’s Signature: Nonhuman Agency, Animal Expression, and the Queerness of Nineteenth-Century Pet Portraiture” Life With and Without Animals: The Second Uncommon Worlds Conference (University of Derby, Derby, UK, 2020)
“Shot Through the Heart: Winslow Homer’s Non-Mechanical Objectivity.” College Art Association Annual Conference (New York, NY, 2015)
“The Art of Bull: Astley D. M. Cooper’s Illusionistic Buffalo.” Fellows Lectures in American Art Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery (Washington DC, 2014)
Fellowships and Awards
CAUS Instructional Innovation Challenge Mini-Grant
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (2021, 2022)
Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Research Assistantship
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University (2014-5)
Tyson Scholars Pre-Doctoral Fellowship The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2014-5)
The Douglass Foundation Fellowship in American Art The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery (2013-4)
Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Fellowship in American Art and Culture Stanford University (2007-2012)
Education
B.A., Art History, Swarthmore College
Ph.D, Art History, Stanford University
