Rebecca Bedell

Margaret Clapp ‘30 Distinguished Alumna Professor of Art

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 283-2047
Email:
rbedell@wellesley.edu
Department
Art
Art History

Art Historian focusing on the art and visual culture of the United States. Interests include the intersection of art and science, ecocriticism, landscape imagery, sentimentalism, and Disney.

My most recent book, Moved to Tears: Rethinking the Art of the Sentimental in the United States (Princeton UP. 2018), aims to uproot the still tenacious modernist prejudice against sentimental art and to transform our understanding of it, redefining and complicating ideas about what sentimental art looks like, who made it, and the cultural work it does. Key figures in the book include John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Winslow Homer, George Inness, and John Trumbull.
Much of my other published work has centered on the intersection of art and science. The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 (2001) explored the impact of the new science of geology on the work of Hudson River School artists, such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Thomas Moran. I also served as co-curator and catalogue essayist for the international exhibition Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts (2009). My current project is an edited volume on ecocritical approaches to art history across time and cultures.
My teaching ranges across Art History, American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Writing. Courses include Art & the Environmental Imagination, American Art, Breaking Boundaries: The Arts of the United States and Mexico, a seminar on Disney & American Culture, and our introductory art history survey.

Education

  • B.A., Wellesley College
  • M.A., Yale University
  • Ph.D., Yale University

Current and upcoming courses

The Power of Images: An Introduction to Art and its Histories

ARTH100

Art matters. Because images, buildings, and environments shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves, learning how to look closely and analyze what you see is a fundamental life skill. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies from the ancient world to the present day. Through the case studies, we will explore concepts of gender and race, cultural appropriation, political propaganda, materials and media, questions of cultural ownership and repatriation, and other historical issues relevant to our current art world.  Site visits and assignments will engage with the rich art and architectural resources of Wellesley's campus.

More Info

  • Art and the Environmental Imagination

    ARTH267

    Exploring the relationship between art and the environment, this course will focus on the land of the United States as it has been shaped into forms ranging from landscape paintings to suburban lawns, national parks, and our own Wellesley College campus. Among the questions we will consider are: What is “nature”? What do we value in a landscape and why? How are artists, architects, and landscape designers responding to environmentalist concerns? (ARTH 267 and ES 267 are cross-listed courses.)