Wendy Katz

Wendy Katz

Professor of Art History (American Art)
PhD 1997 University of California, Los Angeles
MA 1989 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
BA 1988 Occidental College, Los Angeles

Wendy J. Katz is a professor of art history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she is also a Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies and the International Quilt Museum and a faculty member of Nineteenth-Century Studies and the Harris Center for Judaic Studies. She studies how the language of taste, as wielded by patrons, critics and artists to describe American art expresses moral and social values. Her research has focused on 17th-century Anglo-American portraits, 19th-century landscape, genre painting, and sculpture, and African-American art. She also has a website of nineteenth-century periodicals: https://katzsnewspapers.org/

Selected Publications

A True American: William Walcutt, Nativism, and Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022).

Humbug! The Politics of Art Criticism in New York City's Penny Press, New York: Fordham University Press, 2020.

The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898: Art, Anthropology and Popular Culture, editor, University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Lost Writers of the Plains, editor, NET Foundation, iBook, 2015. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/lost-writers-of-the-plains/id964353170?mt=11

Regionalism and the Humanities, ed. with Timothy Mahoney, University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Regionalism and Reform: Art & Class Formation in Antebellum Cincinnati. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2002; paperback 2015.

“Introduction,” Thomas Kinkade (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2000) 9-34.

“Women and Art in the Passing Show,” in The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898: Art, Anthropology and Popular Culture, ed. Wendy Jean Katz (University of Nebraska Press, 2018) 105-160.

“Walt Whitman and “American” Art,” in Essays on the Study of English Language and Literature, ed. Huang Zongying (Changchun City, China: Jilin Publishing Group, 2011) 31-48.

“To bring forth good fruit: still-life painting and nationalism,” Poetical Fire, ed. Brandon Ruud. Sheldon Museum of Art, 2011; 10-19.

“Undocumented Art Criticism by Whitman in the New York Sunday Dispatch and New York Evening Post,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 32:4 (Spring 2015) 215-229.

“Robert S. Duncanson, Race, and Auguste Comte’s Positivism in Cincinnati,” American Studies, 53:1  (2014) 5-30.

“Early American Portraits:  Private to Public, Colonial to Republic,” Gilcrease Museum Journal, XVI: 2 (2008) 40-64.

“Fancy Painting, Street Children and the Fast Men of the Pavé,” Nineteenth-Century Studies, 21 (2007) 85-126.

“Portraits and the Production of the Civil Self in Seventeenth-Century Boston,” Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, 39: 2/3 (2005) 101-128.

"The Art of Pleasing: Lilly Martin Spencer and Refinement,"American Studies. 42:1 (Spring 2001) 5-37.

"Robert S. Duncanson: City and Hinterland," Prospects, vol. 25 (October 2000) 311-335. 

"A Great Moral Discourse: Rembrandt Peale's The Court of Death,"Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 70:1/2 (1996) 14-25.

Essays on Study of English Language and Literature
"Walt Whitman and "American" Art,"  Essays on the Study of English Language and Literature, ed. Huang Zongying. Changchun Ciy, China: Jilin Publishing Group, 2011. 31-48.
Regionalism and the Humanities
Regionalism and the Humanities, ed. with Timothy Mahoney. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
<q>Portraits and the Production of the Civil Self in Seventeenth-Century Boston,</q> Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, 39: 2/3 (2005) 101-128.
"Portraits and the Production of the Civil Self in Seventeenth-Century Boston,” Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, 39: 2/3 (2005) 101-128.
Regionalism and Reform: Art and Class Formation in Antebellum Cincinnati. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2002.
Regionalism and Reform: Art and Class Formation in Antebellum Cincinnati. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2002.
Ohio Valley History, Vol. 3, Fall 2001
“Creating a Western Heart: Art and Reform in Cincinnati's Antebellum Associations,” Ohio Valley History, 1: 3 (Fall 2001) 2-20.
“Women and Art in the Passing Show,” in The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898: Art, Anthropology and Popular Culture, ed. Wendy Jean Katz (University of Nebraska Press, 2018) 105-160.
“Women and Art in the Passing Show,” in The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898: Art, Anthropology and Popular Culture, ed. Wendy Jean Katz (University of Nebraska Press, 2018) 105-160.
<q>Fancy Painting, Street Children and the Fast Men of the Pavé,</q> Nineteenth-Century Studies, 21(2007) 85-126.
“Fancy Painting, Street Children and the Fast Men of the Pavé,” Nineteenth-Century Studies, 21 (2007) 85-126.
Robert S. Duncanson: City and Hinterland,</q> Prospects, 25 (October 2000) 311-335.
"Robert S. Duncanson: City and Hinterland," Prospects, 25 (October 2000) 311-335.
<q>Robert S. Duncanson, Race, and Auguste Comte’s Positivism in Cincinnati,</q> American Studies, 53:1 (2014) 5-30.
“Robert S. Duncanson, Race, and Auguste Comte’s Positivism in Cincinnati,” American Studies, 53:1 (2014) 5-30.
To bring forth good fruit: still-life painting and nationalism,<i>Poetical Fire</i>, ed. Brandon Ruud<i>. </i>Sheldon Museum of Art, 2011; 10-19.

“To bring forth good fruit:  still-life painting and nationalism,” Poetical Fire, ed. Brandon Ruud. Sheldon Museum of Art, 2011; 10-19.

Humbug! The Politics of Art Criticism in New York City's Penny Press

Humbug! The Politics of Art Criticism in New York City's Penny Press, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2020.

A True American: William Walcutt, Nativism, and Nineteenth-Century Art

A True American: William Walcutt, Nativism, and Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022).

Courses

102: Introduction to Art History and Criticism: Renaissance to the present
251: American Art to 1865
252: American Art 1865-1945
391: American Society and Culture in the Civil War Era
451/851: Nineteenth-Century American Art
452/852: American Art 1893-1939
498/898: Special Topics (Winslow Homer/Thomas Eakins; Rethinking Regionalism: Art, Landscape
and Culture of the West; Great Plains Art Exhibition: Sex & Gender in the Art of the Plains)

901: Methodology and Historiography of Art History
919: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Nineteenth Century
951: Seminar in American Art

Honors and Awards

Reynolda House Museum of American Art Mellon Fellowship, 2019-2020.
Smithsonian Institution Senior Fellowship at the National Museum of American Art, 2014.
Jay T. Last Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2008.
Andrew Oliver Short-Term Research Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 2004.