Professional Biography

Matt Johnston studies modern visual culture, in particular the nineteenth century and popular media such as photography and print. A focus in his work is exploring how print publications in many discourses used landscape images to motivate the expansion and development of the United States. In an era before film, such publications relied on inventive, sometimes pre-cinematic orchestrations of viewing and reading practices in order to make their ideological intentions more convincing and compelling. Other scholarly interests include changing relationships between “high art” and popular media and the role of visual representations in the development of sciences such as geology and ethnology.

Academic Credentials

Ph.D. (2004), M.A. (1994), University of Chicago

B.A. (1992), Yale University

Recent Courses

Core 106 Exploration and Discovery

Art 101, 111 History of Western Art

Art 201 Modern European Art

Art 207 Pre-Columbian Art

Art 302 History of Photography

Art 304 History of American Art

Art 401 American Art After 1945

Publications

“Hamlin Garland’s Detour into Art Criticism: Forecasting the Triumph of Popular Culture over Populism at the End of the Frontier,” The Journal of American Culture 34:4 (December 2011)

“National Spectacle from the Boat and the Train: Molding Perceptions of History in American Scenic Guides of the Nineteenth Century,” University of Toronto Quarterly 73:4 (Fall 2004)

“Psychoanalysis and Philosophies of Composition: Applications of the Signifier in Lacan and Poe,” Chicago Art Journal 5:1 (Spring 1994)