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Maggie Wander

Ph.D. Candidate, Visual Studies, University of California Santa Cruz

Co-Executive Editor, Pacific Arts

Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Material and visual cultures of Oceania, Pacific Studies, environment and ecology, Indigenous studies, Native American material and visual culture, settler colonial history
Research Interests: 

Maggie's dissertation project looks at various modes by which artists, curators, and cultural practitioners in Oceania and its diaspora critically engage with the settler colonial legacies at the root of current environmental issues in the Pacific.

Selected Publications: 

“Making New Histories: Contemporary Art in Oceania and the Temporal Orientations of Climate Change.” Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies Special Issue: New Scholarship 9, no. 2 (2021): 155-178.

“Navigating the Climate Crisis: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s Creative Constellations.” Spectator 41, no. 1 (2021): 28-38.

“Inundation: Contemporary Art and Climate Change in the Pacific (Exhibition Review),” The Contemporary Pacific 33, no. 1 (2021): 268-270.

“The Karrabing Film Collective: ‘Talking Back’ to Ethnographic Media and Mineral Extraction in Australia,” Media Fields Journal 15 (2020).

“Artefacts of Encounter: Cook’s Voyages, Colonial Collecting, and Museum Histories (Review),” in The Contemporary Pacific 29, no. 2 (2018): 236-238.

“The Making of Asmat Art: Indigenous Art in a World Perspective, by Nick Stanley (Review),” in The Contemporary Pacific 29, no. 1 (2017): 220-222.

Selected Presentations: 

“’We Are All In the Same Canoe’: Materializing Climate Justice in Oceania Through Art and Visual Culture.” Invited lecture at the Baltimore Museum of Art, October 18, 2021.

“Materializing History: Katerina Teaiwa's Project Banaba as Colonial and Ecological Critique.” Presentation at the College Art Association, Chicago, IL, February 12-15, 2020.

“Navigating the Climate Crisis: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s Creative Constellations.” Presentation at First Forum Graduate Student Conference, University of Southern California, Division of Cinema and Media Studies. October 10-11, 2019.

“Intervening Archives/Methodologies/Theories of Oceania.” Session chair, College Art Association, New York City, NY, February 13-16, 2019.

“O'ahu Time-Travel: How Sean Connelly is Shifting the Past to Reimagine Hawaiʻi's Future.” Presentation at the Oceanic Memories Conference, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, November 29 – December 3, 2017.

“Canoes and Koas: Materializing Indigenous Knowledges and Sustainable Futures in Hawaiʻi.” Presentation at the European Society for Oceanists, Munich, Germany, June 29-July 2, 2017.

“‘Talking Back’ to Settler Colonialism: How the Karrabing Film Collective’s Windjarrameru (The Stealing C*nt$) Responds to a History of Erasure.” Presentation at the College Art Association, New York City, NY, February 16-18, 2017.

Teaching Interests: 

Teaching Fellow, HAVC 70 Visual Cultures of the Pacific Islands, Winter 2021

Teaching Fellow, HAVC 178 Museums and Cultural Heritage in Oceania, Spring 2020

Teaching Fellow, HAVC 179 Ecology, Colonialism, and Contemporary Art in Oceania, Spring 2019

Graduate Student Instructor, HAVC 70 Visual Cultures of the Pacific Islands, Fall 2018

Graduate Student Instructor, HAVC 172 Textile Traditions of Oceania, Fall 2017

Teaching Assistant, History of Art and Visual Culture department, 2016-2020

Honors and Awards: 

Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, Henry Luce Foundation & American Council of Learned Societies

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council

Dissertation Proposal Development Program, University of California Santa Cruz and the Social Science Research Council

Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence, Arts Division, UCSC

Center for Archival Research and Training Fellowship, McHenry Library Special Collections and Archives, UCSC

Education and Training: 
B.A., History of Art and Visual Culture, UCSC, Magna Cum Laude and Highest Honors
M.A., Visual Studies, UCSC, Honors