Rebecca Zurier

Rebecca Zurier studies what American art and culture can tell us about each other, defining art broadly to include comic strips, mass media, vernacular architecture, and other aspects of the visual and built environment. Her research has focused to date on the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, a time when industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and changes in race relations and social mores–as well as experimentation in politics and the arts–redefined the United States as modern. Current interests include urban culture in New York and Detroit, national identity and the perception of American art abroad, and concepts of realism and representation in art and writing.

Field(s) of Study

• American nineteenth-century and twentieth-century art and architecture