Alicia Chester
Photographic media artist
Arts and culture writer
PhD candidate
in visual and cultural studies
at the University of Rochester
Dissertation:
"Study Nature, Not Books:
A Genealogy of Photography
from Psychiatric Portraiture to Brain Imaging"
Current Exhibition:
At, For, By, Of, About
group exhibition of work by ACRE alumni in
Artists Run Chicago 2.0 at the Hyde Park Art Center
Sept. 1 – Nov. 1, 2020
Experience
Summer 2020
Assisted grant-funded audit of the film collection. Self-checked over 6,000 cans of nitrate film: inspected film and can conditions, identified and noted levels of decomposition, removed foreign objects from cans and identified which of these items to archive, cross-referenced and corrected accession and location number discrepancies, updated nitrate film master list, identified film preservation priorities.
Fall 2018-Spring 2020
Nitrate Picture Show film festival archival researcher and volunteer coordinator, conduct long-term project research, write texts for the Dryden Theatre, inspect archived nitrate motion picture film
Fall 2020
Create and teach an introductory topics course (GSWS 100):
“Robot Love: Decoding Gender in Technology” questions assumptions underlying how technology is built and operates regarding gender, race, and sexual orientation. It examines the relationship of technology to society and our everyday, embodied lives while also considering cultural imagination about technology and its oppressive or emancipatory possibilities.
2016-2018
Trains humanities PhD students to integrate digital technologies into innovative research programs
Research assistantships
Architectural Biometrics, principal investigator Dr. Peter Christensen
The Lazarus Project, principal investigator Dr. Gregory Heyworth
2013-PRESENT
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
PHD CANDIDATE, VISUAL & CULTURAL STUDIES
Dissertation in progress
Study Nature, Not Books: A Genealogy of Photography from Psychiatric Portraiture to Brain Imaging
Research interests: Photography history and theory, media archaeology, science and technology studies, medical humanities, modern and contemporary art
2011-2012
Position funded by the Donnelley Foundation to research and write texts on artists and artworks in the permanent collection and Midwest Photographers Project to be published online in the collections database
2009-2013
Taught five sections per year of digital photography and supervised independent study students
PORTFOLIO
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