Biographical Information

Gillian Sneed (she/ella/ela) is joining the School of Art + Design as Assistant Professor of Art History in the fall of 2021. Sneed received her PhD in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Prior to coming to SDSU, she completed a postdoctoral curatorial fellowship at the Ernesto de Sousa Center for Multidisciplinary Study (CEMES) in Lisbon, Portugal. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in art history at several universities and institutions including Brooklyn College, the City College of New York, The New School for Social Research, Pace University, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Sneed’s research broadly examines 20th- and 21st-century feminist art histories of the Americas, with a focus on Brazilian modern and contemporary art and transnational exchanges between Latin America and the U.S. Her scholarship has addressed the intersecting genres of film, video, performance, conceptual and socially engaged art, and the gendered, sexual, and racial politics at play in these practices. At SDSU, she will be teaching a range of undergraduate and graduate global art history and visual culture courses, including modern and contemporary art of the Americas.

Sneed has published numerous articles and exhibition reviews in publications including Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art International, post: notes on art in a global context, and Texte zur Kunst, and online at Smarthistory.org. She has also published academic articles in the peer-reviewed journals Brésil(s), Diacrítica, and Women’s Art Journal. She is currently working on two book projects: a monograph based on her doctoral dissertation about gender and identity in Brazilian performance-for-camera since the 1970s, and an edited volume of the letters between the U.S. feminist artist Rosemary Mayer and her sister poet Bernadette Mayer. Sneed will also contribute a chapter on Brazilian women’s video art of the 1970s to the volume Pop Cinema, edited by Glyn Davis and Tom Day (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).

Sneed has been invited to lecture nationally and internationally, including at Amsterdam University College (Netherlands), the University of Minho (Portugal), Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts (Germany), Southfirst Gallery (NY), the James Gallery (NY), the State University of New York, Old Westbury (NY), and Hofstra University (NY). She has presented her research at a variety of conferences including the College Art Association (CAA) and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). She has also curated exhibitions of contemporary art at various galleries including the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery (NY), the Peter Fingestein Gallery (NY), and A/C Institute (NY). Her work has received funding from the Association of Latin American Art (ALAA), the CUNY Lost & Found Archival Research Fellowship, the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Grant, and the Terra Foundation. Sneed is a member of LASA, ALAA, and CAA, where she is also on the Committee on Diversity Practices (2021–2024).