Shana Klein, Ph.D., assistant professor of Art History in the School of Art, received a short-term fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia for her research on motherhood in U.S. art. The 2023–24 Davida T. Deutsch Fellowship in Women’s History will support Dr. Klein's project "Spoiled Milk: The Politics of Race and Motherhood in Victorian American Art."
Dr. Klein's current book project, “Spoiled Milk: the Politics of Race and Motherhood in U.S. Art” explores how pictures of motherhood prompted larger questions about race and citizenship. Depictions of Native-, African- and immigrant motherhood were especially fraught and reflect how motherhood was a construct used to police certain communities. Pictures of motherhood also reflect changes in society when women were gaining more authority over their bodies and taking advantage of advancements in contraception, anesthetized childbirth and infant formula. In short, this project examines how artists wielded motherhood to discuss the political direction of the country in ways that relate to current debates over reproductive rights.
About Shana Klein Ph.D.
Shana Klein, Ph.D. is an art historian trained in the history of American art, with sub-specialties in African-American and Native-American art. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of New Mexico, where she completed the dissertation, turned book—“The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion.” Klein has been awarded several fellowships for her research at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, American Council of Learned Societies, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, among others. She has published research in journals such as American Art, Public Art Dialogue, Southern Cultures and more. Her explorations of art, food and racism have also been featured on a number of digital publications and podcasts. Klein’s research interests include American visual and material culture, food studies, race and post-colonial studies and art and social justice.
About the Davida T. Deutsch Program in Women's History
Since 2011, the Davida T. Deutsch Women’s History Acquisition Fund has made it possible to develop to the collections further. The Davida T. Deutsch Program in Women’s History endowment, given in honor of Mrs. Deutsch in 2013, supports various initiatives including: offering research fellowships; identifying significant materials in the collections; providing in-depth cataloging; developing exhibitions and electronic resources; organizing public programs; and working directly with researchers, educators and public historians. The textual and visual material in the Library Company’s collections range from important canonical works by women writers to minor advertising ephemera. Likewise the collections document extraordinary women who achieved celebrity as well as many now-unidentifiable women who used cookbooks, read novels and followed fashions in women’s magazines.