PhD Candidate
Art History
Modern and Contemporary American Art
Research Interests
- Difference and the Politics of Identity
- Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora
- Post-Identity
- Curatorial Practice
- Camp and Queer Theory
- Critical Race Studies
- Affect Theory
- African American Art History and Historiography
- Visual Culture Studies
- Parody, Pastiche, and Appropriation
Education
BA, Interdisciplinary Studies, New York University
MA, Art History, University of Oregon
Bio
Jessi DiTillio is a 2019–2020 Luce/ACLS American Art Dissertation Fellow and a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation, “After the Punchline: American Parody since 1970 as Generative Form,” examines parodies by Robert Colescott, Glenn Ligon, and Nao Bustaman-te. She has held curatorial fellowships at the Visual Arts Center, the Art Galleries at Black Studies, and the Contemporary Austin. She is a co-founding member of the curatorial group Neon Queen Collective, with whom she organized a two-part exhibition in 2017 featuring installation and video work by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.