Elisa Mandell

About

Elisa C. Mandell, Associate Professor of Art History, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Anthropology, specializing in Archaeology. She returned to UCLA for her Ph.D. in Art History. Trained as a Pre-Columbianist, her dissertation on posthumous portraits of infants and children in Mexican art reflects her current research interests in funerary rituals, photography, and national identity. Professor Mandell’s other research interests include gender, post-colonialism, hybridity, masquerade, and the history of museum exhibition.

Professor Mandell’s objectives as a teacher are to share and impart her enthusiasm for the history of art to students while simultaneously fostering critical thinking, not only about assigned readings, but also about how the art, culture, and civilizations of the non-West are viewed by the West. Using an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes art, history, literature, anthropology, and archaeology, students are challenged to be powerful in their thinking, writing, and problem solving. Professor Mandell teaches a diverse range of topics, including surveys of Pre-Columbian art history and the history of world art. She also offers a seminar that examines how the art of marginalized peoples, particularly those from former European and U.S. colonies, have been exhibited in Western museums. Professor Mandell is developing four courses to teach in the near future: the art of the Aztecs and their predecessors; a survey of Latin American art; the art and architecture of Mexico City from the Aztec to the present; and an advanced course on the Maya. She has presented her research at interdisciplinary conferences in the United States, Mexico, and Ecuador, and was a fellow in the six-week 2006 NEH Summer Institute, "Maya Worlds: on-site in Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.” Professor Mandell is a former marathoner and collegiate cyclist.