Maria Elena Versari
External Faculty Fellow, Assistant Professor, Universitá di Messina, Italy
The Foreign Policy of the Avante Garde

Dr.  Versari's current project proposes a new systemic interpretation of the historical avant-garde by examining its internal strategies of identity and canonization and by reassessing the workings of its system of national and international alliances and networks. While at Rice, she will engage in a new analysis of how the discourse of the avant-garde assumed and reworked the discourse of political internationalism. She is the author of two monographs for the Scala Archives in Florence, one on Wassily Kandinsky and the other on Constantin Brancusi. Dr. Versari will teach a course in the Art History Department, "Cultural Boundaries: Ethnic Myths and the Search for a National Style."