Juergen Heinrichs , Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Art History Program
College of Human Development Culture and Media
(973) 761-9529
Email
The Arts Center
Room 207
Juergen Heinrichs, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Art History Program
College of Human Development Culture and Media
I joined Seton Hall University in 1997 after spending a year as a Visiting Instructor at Swarthmore College. I received my Ph.D. from Yale University in 1998. At Seton Hall, I have taught a range of courses in art history and museum studies as well as a graduate museum seminar abroad in Berlin, Germany.
My research falls into four thematic areas. First, I study encounters between African American and German culture from the early 20th century to the present. Departing from the highly successful reception of jazz and the Charleston in Weimar Germany, I probe what such intermedia (between art, music and dance) and cross-cultural (between African American and German culture) translations reveal about the possibilities and limitations of meaningful cultural contact. Second, I chart the “fallout” of climate change in visual culture, a project that recently led me to examine the role of public buses as metaphors of social change in American culture or study a series of artworks that reflect how automobile corporations changed their self-representations through (landscape) architecture and promotional materials. Third, my interest in intersections between art and science prompted me to study the cultural history of astronomical phenomena or probe the interrelationships between art and medical imaging. Fourth, I study the “afterlife” of mythology in popular culture in various case studies that highlight the idealization and subsequent dismantling of public figures, pop stars or ordinary people in ways that evoke major narratives of Greco-Roman mythology.
Education
- Ph.D., Yale University
- M.Phil., M.A., Yale University
- M.A., University Hamburg
Scholarship
- "Mixed Media, Mixed Identities: The Universal Aesthetics of Marc Brandenburg (Book Chapter)." In Maria Diedrich (Eds.), From Black to Schwarz: Cultural Crossovers between African America and Germany, Berlin, June 2011.
- "Paul Gilroy: Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (Book Chapter)."
In Claus Leggewie, Anne Katrin Lang & Dariuš Zifonun (Eds.), 101 Schlüsselwerke der Kulturwissenschaften, Bielefeld: Transcript, May 2011 -
"Primitivism." (Book Chapter)
In Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, New York: Routledge, 992- 994, October 2004. -
"Europe and the Harlem Renaissance: London (Book Chapter)."
In Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, New York: Routledge, 347- 349, October 2004. -
"Philadelphia (Book Chapter)."
In Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, New York: Routledge, 514- 518, October 2004.
Accomplishments
- As 2011-12 Fellow with the American Council on Education (ACE), Heinrichs completed a higher education leadership training program.
- Summer Faculty Seminar Berlin, National Endowment for the Humanities, Germany, Summer 2000