Charissa Terranova

Ph.D. - Architectural History and Theory
Harvard University - 2004

M.A. - Architectural History and Theory
Harvard University - 2001

M.A. - Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago - 1996

B.A. - Art History
University of Tennessee, Knoxville - 1992

“Curating the Cybernetic: The Brief Collaboration of György Kepes and Marshall McLuhan.” Forthcoming in Against Crisis, Then and Now: McLuhan, with Kepes and Tyrwhitt. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, Ed. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang International Academic Press, 2024.  2024 - publications

Charissa N. Terranova. “Bacterial Politics: Autonomy, Autopoiesis, Bioart,” Antennae. No. 59 (November 2022) 24-38. 2022 - publications

“Systems and Automatisms: Jack Burnham, Stanley Cavell, and the Dialectic of Contemporary Art,” forthcoming in Leonardo spring 2014 2014 - Publication

Automotive Prosthetic: Conceptual Art, The Car, and Technological Mediation, 1951- Present, forthcoming fall 2013 from the University of Texas Press 2013 - Publication

“The Scarcity Aesthetic: Art, Design, and Population when Systems Fail,” Proceedings of  the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 101st Annual Meeting. March 2013. 2013 - Publication

The Scarcity Aesthetic: Art, Design, and Population when Systems Fail, submitted for inclusion in an edited volume, edited by George Sochan and published through Cambridge Scholars Publishing, winter 2013 2013 - Publication

“Hummer: The Cultural Militarism of Art Based on the SUV,” forthcoming in Inside Mobility (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). 2012 - Publication

Haptic Unconscious: A Prehistory of Affectivity in Moholy-Nagys Pedagogy at the New Bauhaus. Touch and Go issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac. Eds.,Irini Papadimitriou and Jonathan Munro. (2012) Vol. 18, No. 3: 226-237. 2012 - Publication

Organic Modernism: from the British Bauhaus to Cybernetics (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Terranova's forthcoming book, Organic Modernism: from the British Bauhaus to Cybernetics (Bloomsbury Press, 2024), is a transdisciplinary study of "organicism," the holistic idea maintaining the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The book uses the historical framework of “organic modernism” to locate earlier instances of contemporary scientific thinking, including niche construction theory, epigenetics, and the organism-and-environment instead of organism-versus-environment perspective of situated genetics within twentieth-century British cultures of art-science-design. In the book, she recounts the history of British organicist artists, scientists, and designers cooperating in various capacities from the Great Depression and WW II to postwar cybernetics. It follows the red thread of philosophical organicism in the twentieth century through various manifestations in the UK, including modern architecture, surrealism, socialism, the welfare state, epigenetics, biology-based art exhibitions, robotic art and design, cybernetics, and ecology in art. A sequel to Terranova's Art as Organism: Biology and the Evolution of the Digital Image (Bloomsbury, 2022 [2016]), Organic Modernism reveals the biological roots of cybernetics in the British context. ​

"A Biological Bill of Rights," keynote address at International Light Art Symposium in Budapest, Hungary

Terranova gave the keynote address at the 30th Anniversary International Light Art Symposium at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, September 14-15, 2023. The talk, “A Biological Bill of Rights: Organicism as Justice-Seeking,” explores philosophical and scientific organicism in the work of Hungarian modernists György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy and American geneticist Ruth Sager. Organized by the International Kepes Society of Budapest, the gathering hosts a screening of Interthinking Art + Science, the new documentary about Kepes made by curator Márton Orosz.

Visual Cultures of Race and Science

Terranova organized The Visual Cultures of Race and Science (February 6-7, 2022) at the University of Texas at Dallas. Sponsored by the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, UT Dallas School of Arts and Humanities, the Edith O'Donnell Institute of Art History, this symposium explored how the language and images of the natural sciences shaped and substantiated ideological and inaccurate ideas about "race." Speakers included Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Duana Fullwiley, Linda Kim, Eben Kirksey, and Terranova.​

Courses

VPAS 7380 Organic Modernism
VPAS 7380 Art, Nature, and the Machine
VPAS 7380 Charles Darwin and the Evolution of Beauty
AHST 3318 Art and the History of Nature: Prehistory to Contemporary Art (formerly AHST 3318 Contemporary Art)
AHST 3322 Modern Architecture
AHST 4342 New Media Art Histories
AHST 3318 Contemporary Art
AHST 2331 Understanding Art

Degrees

Harvard, PhD, Architectural Theory and History, 2004
Harvard, MA, Architectural Theory and History, 2001
University of IL, Chicago, MA , Art History, 2001
University of TN, BA, Art History, 1992

Publications during sabbatical 2022-23

While on sabbatical 2022-23, Terranova was busy writing essays in addition to the book. In fall 2022, she published "Bacterial Politics: Autonomy, Autopoiesis, Bioart" in Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Culture, the British journal for contemporary art and the natural sciences. Edited by Ken Rinaldo, this issue explores "microbial ecologies" in the art-and-science practices of several contemporary bioartists. Click here to find out more and download a free copy of this beautiful, innovative, and insightful journal. Terranova also recently published "Hannah and Joe: Interspecies Art between Bird and Man" at Interalia Magazine and Leonardo Reviews. Other forthcoming essays include "Semblance of Mindful Intent: Agency and Feedback in the Artwork of Ian Ingram" (Beall Center for Art + Technology, UC Irvine) and "Curating the Cybernetic: The Brief Collaboration of György Kepes and Marshall McLuhan" in Against Crisis, Then and Now: McLuhan with Kepes and Tyrwhitt (Peter Lang, 2024), ed. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers.

Charissa Terranova Named Director of Central Track: The UT Dallas Artists Residency

An internationally known scholar of modern and contemporary art and architecture, Dr. Charissa Terranova, , has been named both director of Central Track: The UT Dallas Artists Residency and assistant professor of aesthetic studies in the School of Arts & Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas.  

An experimental endeavor, the artists residency at UT Dallas was founded in collaboration with South Side on Lamar in 2001.  It was the first program of its kind in North Texas, modeled after such prestigious residencies as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Artpace in San Antonio and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.