Alessandra Russo
Associate Professor
Alessandra Russo has been trained in art history and historical anthropology at the Universitá di Bologna, at the Universiteit Leiden, and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, where she received her Ph.D. (2006). Her dissertation (Triptyque novohispano. Plumes, cartes et graffiti pour une histoire métisse des arts) was awarded the EHESS best dissertation prize. Before joining the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, at Columbia, in 2007, she had been visiting researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (UNAM, Mexico).
Professor Russo is author of the book El Realismo Circular. Tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía novohispana (México, UNAM/IIE, 2005), and of numerous articles in the field of the Iberian arts published in international journals (Journal of the History of Collections, Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics, October Terra Brasilis, and Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas) in books and exhibition catalogs (Pintura de los Reinos, Planète Métisse, The Arts of Latin America, Painting the New World, Brincando Fronteras, Colors Between Two Worlds). She collaborated with Serge Gruzinski in the curatorship of Planète Métisse (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2008-2009). With the support of a Getty Foundation collaborative research grant, she curated with Gerhard Wolf and Diana Fane the exhibition El vuelo de las imágenes. Arte plumario en México y Europa. 1300-1700 (Museo Nacional de Arte, México, 2011) and edited the forthcoming catalog. Her new book manuscript is The Untranslatable Image. A Mestizo History of the Arts from New Spain (16th-17th centuries).
At Columbia, Professor Russo teaches courses on the Early Modern Iberian Worlds, with a special emphasis on the theory, practice, and displaying of the arts, between 1400 and 1600. Her courses include graduate seminars (Theory of the Arts in the Iberian Worlds; Visions from Afar, Visions from Nearby) and undergraduate courses (Image Making in the Iberian Worlds; Nature and Sacredness in the Iberian Worlds).
She has been invited as a visiting professor at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (July, 2010) and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris (May, 2011), and will be a research fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), in Berlin, during the 2012-2013 academic year.
Selection of publications accessible online:
- “Cortés’s objects and the Idea of New Spain : Inventories as Spatial Narratives”, Journal of the History of Collections (J. Keating, L. Markey, editors, special issue "Captured Objects: Inventories of Early Modern Collections"), Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 1-24.
- El vuelo de las imágenes. Booklet of the exhibition. Text written with Gerhard Wolf and Diana Fane. Excerpts here.
- “The Global before Globalization” (with B.Flood; D.Joselit; A.Nagel; E.Wang; C.Wood; M.Yiengpruksawan), October, 133 (Summer 2010), MIT Press, pp. 3-19.
- Image-plume, temps reliquaire? Tangibilités d’une histoire esthétique », Traditions et Temporalités des Images (edit. by G. Careri, F. Lissarague, J-C. Schmitt, C. Severi), Paris, EHESS, 2009: chapter 9.
- “Triptyque novohispano. Plumes, cartes et graffiti pour une histoire métisse des arts (16e-17e siècles). Discours liminaire à la soutenance de these ”, in Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, n. 7 (2007)
- A Tale of two bodies. On aesthetic condensation in the Mexican colonial graffiti of Actopan, 1629 », Res. Antrhropology and Aesthetics 49-50 (2006), Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Harvard Art Museums, pp. 59-79.
- El realismo circular. Tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía novohispana. Siglos XVI-XVII, Mexico, IIE- UNAM, 2005.
- “Plumes of Sacrifice. Transformations in Sixteenth-Century Mexican Feather art” Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics 42 (2002), Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Harvard Art Museums, pp. 226-250.
- “El Renacimiento vegetal. Arboles de Jesé entre el Viejo Mundo y el Nuevo”, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, n. 73 (1998), IIE- UNAM, pp. 5-39
Casa Hispánica 405
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(212) 854-5267
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