NCID-0966
Sean Kramer
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Education/Degree:
1 History of Art History of Art (University of Michigan)
About
Sean Kramer recently began a three-year curatorial postdoctoral fellowship at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) after completing his Ph.D. in History of Art at the University of Michigan in 2022. He also holds a B.A. and an M.A. from The University of Kansas. His research interests include masculinity in nineteenth-century art and visual culture, militarism, nationalism, and imperialism, and the interwoven histories of sexuality and medicine. His dissertation and scholarship examine a particular order of British and French painting that ennobled the experiences of the common soldier, which came to prominence in the decades following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, a period marked by sweeping military reforms, intensifying globalization through colonial expansion, and social and political upheaval. Before joining the BCMA, Sean worked in several capacities at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and Detroit Institute of Arts.
Current Work
Sean Kramer's immediate research plans involve developing his doctoral dissertation into a book-length manuscript. A portion of this work recently appeared in in the article “Undressing the Army: Hygiene and Hierarchies in Eugène Chaperon’s The Shower in the Regiment (1887),” published in the edited volume Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art. While at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), he organized the exhibition Oh, honey... A queer reading of UMMA's collection and is currently helping plan a reinstallation of the Museum's nineteenth-century European and American art gallery. This latter project will interrogate constructions of whiteness, nationalism, and empire in art and visual culture of the period. He is also developing articles and exhibition ideas around the depiction of Indigenous soldiers in nineteenth-century French art and depictions of Afghanistan in nineteenth-century British art.
Research Area Keyword(s)
masculinity, militarism, nationalism