Biography
I work at the intersection of various academic fields, including literary studies, art history, and media studies. My current book project, Art War: Making Antifascism Since the Spanish Civil War, examines the transnationality and transhistoricity of the Spanish Civil War through its representations in twentieth- and twenty-first century art, literature, visual culture, and mass media. I analyze the dynamic ways that artists, writers, and activists in Europe, Africa, and the Americas have perceived the Spanish Civil War as the most salient example of transnational antifascist organizing since 1936. In addition to my scholarly writing, which appears in Modernism/modernity, Twentieth-Century Literature, and Grey Room, I often publish art criticism, essays, and reviews in more public venues like the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, and the Chicago Review. As part of my curatorial practice, I also develop and implement initiatives for academic engagement, research, and interpretation in support of the inaugural Art at the David Rubenstein Forum program at the University of Chicago.
I received my Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in June 2020 after completing a year-long residential fellowship at the Franke Institute for the Humanities. I earned my MA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and my BA from the University of South Carolina-Columbia. I also completed a certificate in Spanish Language and Culture at the Universidad de Granada. Between finishing my undergraduate degree and entering graduate school, I lived in Barcelona and taught English in a public primary school. I am originally from rural South Carolina.
You can read more about my research and teaching on my personal website: www.brandontruett.com
Selected Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- “Materialities of Abstraction: Jessie Dismorr’s Poems, Transatlantic Modernism, and Feminist Poetics.” Twentieth-Century Literature 67.1 (June 2021): 191-214.
- “Guernica, Inc.: Art, Exile, Recirculation.” Modernism/modernity Print Plus. December 9, 2020.
- “Fiber Optics.” Co-Authored with Bill Brown, Zoe B. Hughes, et al. Grey Room 77 (Fall 2019): 98-120.
Public Essays
- “Ways of Seeing Art in a Pandemic.” Solicited contribution for “Visualities.” Edited by Alix Beeston. Modernism/modernity Print Plus. August 5, 2020.
- “Dr. Barnes, Joan Miró, and the Spanish Civil War.” Barnesfoundation.org. September 2019.
- “Two Catalonias’s Pact of Forgetting.” Los Angeles Review of Books. January 11, 2019.
- “Materializing the Fascist Aesthetic in Three Guineas.” Special Issue on “Woolf and Materiality.” Ed. Derek Ryan. Virginia Woolf Miscellany 85 (Spring 2014): 25-28.
Art Criticism
- “‘The AIDS Crisis Is Still Beginning,’ Says Artist and Activist Gregg Bordowitz.” Hyperallergic. May 16, 2019.
- “Descending into Lee Bontecou’s Apocalyptic Voids.” Hyperallergic. February 8, 2019.
Teaching
- “Media Aesthetics I: Image” (Autumn 2020, Autumn 2021)
- “Media Aesthetics III: Sound” (Spring 2021)
- “Media Aesthetics II: Text” (Winter 2021)
- “Media Aesthetics I: Image” (Autumn 2020)
- “Borders, Migration, and Refugees” (Autumn 2020)
- “The Arts of Civil War” (Autumn 2018) sponsored by the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights