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By Appointment
Education
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BA, University of Florida
About Me
Katherine Arpen teaches introductory art history courses covering the prehistoric to contemporary periods, as well as upper-level courses on eighteenth-century European art, nineteenth-century European art, and Asian art. Her teaching has been recognized with a College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Lecturer Award (2002). Prior to coming to Auburn, she taught undergraduate courses at UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, and Guilford College, and served as a teaching associate for university courses at the Ackland Art Museum.
Arpen’s research centers on eighteenth-century Europe, with particular interests in gender and representations of the body. Her dissertation examined the eighteenth-century French interest in bathing from the perspective of the arts, analyzing a wide range of visual material—including paintings, sculptures, prints, and architectural interiors—to explore the interconnections between bathing and period discourses on aesthetics, sensation, and pleasure. She has also participated in the development of multiple museum exhibitions, including Lines of Attack: Conflicts in Caricature at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, for which she wrote a catalogue essay on the use of parodic satire in political cartoons.