Megan Pounds

Megan is a PhD student in the History of Art Department and is pursuing a graduate certificate in German Studies. Her broad area of interest is nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, with a particular focus on the historical avant-garde in Germany and Switzerland. Her research explores the work of Dada artists and centers on questions surrounding media and the circulation of publications within artistic networks, especially as these relate to the generation of material records of events largely understood as ‘immaterial’ within the context of art history, such as cabaret performance, sound poetry, and experimental dance.

Prior to beginning her graduate studies at Michigan in 2018, Megan earned her BA in Art History magna cum laude from Millsaps College in 2014 and her MA in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Oregon in 2016, where her thesis research centered on issues of materiality and automatic modes of creation (and destruction) in Kurt Schwitters’s Merz Barn (1947-48). She also holds a diverse background in museum and archival settings, ranging from a curatorial internship in Modern and Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art to an internship in the ceramics laboratory at the Terminal Classic Puuc Maya archaeological complex Kiuic in Yucatán, México. Most recently, Megan worked for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History as an Education Specialist at the Eudora Welty House and Garden in Jackson, MS.