Melissa Gustin
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Melissa L. Gustin completed her PhD in History of Art at York in 2018, supervised by Prof. Liz Prettejohn. Her thesis focused on American women sculptors active in Rome in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, classical receptions, queer theory, and archaeology. Since graduating, she has held the Henry Moore Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2018-2020, working on her monograph tentatively titled Unquiet Grandeur: Encountering Antiquity in Neoclassical Sculpture. This book explores the multifaceted modes of citation, referencing, and reproduction in classically informed sculpture from the late 18th century to contemporary 3D scanning and printing. She has organized conferences at York, the Henry Moore Institute, and online for the British Association of Victorian Studies, most recently on Black Lives Matter and Victorian Studies. Her research is published in The Burlington Magazine (2019), on a previously unpublished copper head by Antonio Canova, and the Nineteenth Century Magazine on Emma Stebbins and the Vatican Museums (2019), with substantial articles on Harriet Hosmer expected in late 2021. Her research and travel has been funded by the Francis Haskell Memorial Scholarship, Association for Art History, Terra Foundation, and British Association for Victorian Studies. She has spoken widely on women sculptors, classical receptions, archaeology and literature, mermaids, fungus, 3D printing and scanning, and popular culture in the UK, Europe, and America. Melissa is a postdoctoral representative on the BAVS executive committee 2019-21.
