Jessica Gerschultz
Senior Humanities Research Fellow
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA, James Madison University; MA, The University of New Mexico; PhD, Emory University
Research Areas: Art History; Cultural Studies; Design; Gender Studies; History; Islamic History; Middle Eastern Studies; African Studies
About Jessica
Jessica Gerschultz joined the faculty of the School of Art History at the University of St. Andrews in July 2023. Previously, she was an Associate Professor and Graduate Studies Director in the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. Professor Gerschultz's research and teaching interests span modern and contemporary art in the Arab world and Africa (with an emphasis on tapestry, fiber art, and craft-based mediums), gender and materiality, and feminist art history and methodologies.
Professor Gerschultz was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow in 2016 for the writing of her first book Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École: Fabrications of Modernism, Gender, and Power (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019). Her current book project Fiber Art Constellations examines transregional networks of tapestry artists. It traces artistic exchanges across the Arab world, Africa, and former Soviet-bloc countries to offer a feminist history of modern tapestry.
Professor Gerschultz has published numerous articles and chapters, including in Making Modernity: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century Islamic Mediterranean (2022), The Journal of Modern Craft (2020), Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today (Oxford University Press, 2020), The Art Salon in the Arab Region (Beiruter Texte und Studien 2018), ARTMargins (2016), The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (2015), and Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture (2014). She was a subject advisor for the anthology Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018) and has published essays in exhibition catalogues, including in Objects of Imagination: Contemporary Arab Ceramics (2023), Elles font l’abstraction (2021), and Gorgi pluriel (2018). She has held fellowships and awards from the American Philosophical Society, the Max Weber Foundation, the Forum Transregionale Studien, the American Association of University Women, the U.S. Fulbright Council, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.
Professor Gerschultz has served on the board of AMCA, the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, since 2015. She is a lead researcher for the AMCA-Getty Foundation project “Mapping Art Histories in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey.” She has co-organized several AMCA conferences in partnership with NYUAD, including 1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures, and Beginnings at the University of North Texas in 2022 and Abstraction Unframed at NYU Abu Dhabi, Barjeel Art Foundation, and Sharjah Art Museum in 2016.
Publications
Book
Gerschultz, Jessica. Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École: Fabrications of Modernism, Gender, and Power. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, series Refiguring Modernism, 2019.
Recipient of the CAA Millard Meiss Publication Award and the Vice Chancellor for Research Book Award, University of Kansas.
Journal Articles
Gerschultz, Jessica. "Women's Tapestry and the Poetics of Renewal: Threading Mid-Century Practices." Journal of Modern Craft 13, no. 1 Special issue on Middle Eastern Crafts (May 2020): 37-50.
Gerschultz, Jessica. "Mutable Form and Materiality: Toward a Critical History of New Tapestry Networks." ARTMargins 5, no. 1 (February 2016): 3-29.
Gerschultz, Jessica. "A Bourguibist Mural in the New Monastir? Zoubeïr Turki’s Play on Knowledge, Power, and Audience Perception." The International Journal of Islamic Architecture 4, no. 2 (July 2015): 315-341. doi:10.1386/ijia.4.2.315_1.
Gerschultz, Jessica. "The Interwoven Ideologies of Art and Artisanal Education in Postcolonial Tunis." Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 8, no. 1 (2014): 31-51.
Book Chapters
Gerschultz, Jessica. “An Aesthetic Ecosystem in Adrian Pepe’s Untitled Braided Shearlings: Art and Resilience in Lebanon.” In Craft and War: Makers, Objects and Armed Conflicts since 1850, edited by Jennifer Way. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2024.
Gerschultz, Jessica. “The Turn to Tapestry: Islamic Textiles and Women Artists in Tunis.” In Making Modernity: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century Islamic Mediterranean, edited by Margaret S. Graves and Alex Dika Seggerman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. Recipient of the CAA Millard Meiss Publication Award.
Gerschultz, Jessica. “Notes on Tending Feminist Methodologies.” In Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today, edited by Ceren Özpinar and Mary Healy, 131-143. London: Oxford University Press, Proceedings of the British Academy, 2020.
Gerschultz, Jessica. “The Concept of ‘Decorative’ Art in Tunisian Salons: Roots of the Tunisian École.” In The Art Salon in the Arab Region: The Politics of Taste Making, edited by Nadia von Maltzahn and Monique Bellan, 47-74. Beirut and Würzburg: Beiruter Texte und Studien, no. 132, 2018.
Articles for Online Research Platforms
Gerschultz, Jessica. “Safia Farhat’s Hybrid Creatures in Civic Spaces.” Essay solicited by MoMA for the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) research program post|notes on art in a global context. 2022.
Gerschultz, Jessica. "Traversing Myths and Regions: The Collaborative Tapestries of Jolanta Owidzka and Georgette Saliba." Essay solicited for the editorial dossier Trips, Institute of the Present (Bucharest, Romania). [Bilingual: English and Romanian.] 2020.
Oral History Project
Co-designer of Harrania Weavers Oral History Project, with Balsam Saleh, Assistant Director and Curator of Regional Architecture Collections. American University in Cairo, Rare Books and Special Collections Library. (2019)
