“Drift and Anchor: Researching Ships, Remembering the Sea”
This talk explores the intersections of art history and memoir through the lens of maritime architecture and seafaring culture. Drawing on her current book project, which explores ships as architectural spaces, Professor Anderson considers how vessels shaped labor, cities, and natural landscapes across the early modern Atlantic. At the same time, she reflects on the role of personal memory—growing up on the water, navigating family histories, and returning to the sea through research—as a way to anchor historical scholarship in lived experience. By drifting between archival study and autobiographical reflection, Anderson suggests how creative approaches can expand the boundaries of art history, opening new forms of narrative that bridge research and storytelling.
Christy Anderson is a historian of architecture whose work bridges early modern Europe, global maritime history, and contemporary design. She is currently the Allen W. Clowes Fellow at the National Humanities Center. A professor in the Department of Art History and member of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, she is particularly interested in how architectural knowledge moves across cultures, materials, and environments. Her current book project explores the ship as an architectural type—examining how mobile spaces at sea have shaped cities, labor, and natural landscapes across the Atlantic world.
Anderson is the former editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, where she championed scholarship that expanded the field’s boundaries in time, geography, and method. Her broader commitment to public-facing humanities includes collaborative digital platforms, podcasts, and curatorial projects that engage diverse audiences in the interpretation of architectural and material histories. A Guggenheim Fellow and former Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, she received her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has taught at Yale University, MIT, and the Courtauld Institute of Art.
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For more information:
https://go.unc.edu/anderson
Contact: Maggie Cao,
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