Karen Gonzalez Rice

Karen Gonzalez Rice's approach to teaching and research is multidisciplinary, drawing on methodologies of contemporary art history, religious studies, American studies and trauma studies. Her courses include Late 20th-Century Art, Seeing: Mona Lisa to Instagram, and upper-level courses such as Pop Art & Critical Visual Culture, and Radical Bodies: Contemporary Art & Action. 

Her courses support the Museum Studies Program and often include hands-on work with art objects from local collections and from the Fannie Wetmore Print Collection, housed in the Department of Art History & Architectural Studies. In Fall 2016, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum opened an exhibition curated by students of her course AHI 456: Museum Projects. Titled "Reading the Image: Text in American Art since 1969," the exhibition was on view through January 2017.

Gonzalez Rice joined Connecticut College in 2011. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies in 2010.

In 2016, Gonzalez Rice published Long Suffering: American Endurance Art as Prophetic Witness with the University of Michigan Press series Theater: Theory/Text/Performance. The book explores the intersection of twentieth-century American avant-garde performance art with traditions of prophetic religious discourse in the United States (https://www.press.umich.edu/8057432/long_suffering). Her next project, Forming the Habit: Monastic Commitment in Contemporary Art, traces representations of monasticism in American popular visual culture and in avant-garde performance art in the 1970s.

Gonzalez Rice has also taught at Duke University and at Beloit College.

At Connecticut College, she supports faculty in exploring the integration of technologies and pedagogy as the co-director of the Technology Fellows Program and as the faculty advisor for the Tempel Summer Institute. She also serves on the Mode Consultant Committee, the Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Board, and several other committees.

Visit the art history department website.

Majoring in art history.

Museum studies certificate program.