Alexandra Fraser

I study art, architecture, and decoration of the long nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the lived experience of works of art and design. In so doing, I frequently pursue art’s entanglements with literature, the built environment, social theory, and theories of art itself. My teaching and research focus on spaces of domestic, private life and what they can tell us about shifts in social experience as well as the challenges and consequences of its representation under conditions of global modernity. Currently, these interests gather around two larger projects. The first, a book manuscript with the working title Wallpaper and Window: The Interior and Social Belonging in Fin-de-Siècle Art and Architecture, is a migratory study of the domestic interior as a site of artistic experimentation and index of modern experience across late-nineteenth century Europe. The second is a nascent “biography” of home art collections in and around Detroit. This curatorial and public-facing project explores the livability of an earlier moment of European modernism amidst the sharp rise and transformation of the industrial Midwest after World War II. My writing has appeared in West 86th, Design and Culture, Panorama, as well as in edited volumes in France and North America. 

In addition to MAPH curriculum, I teach thematic courses in the Art History Department on topics such as luxury and historical change, interiority and modernity, color and décor, and migratory aesthetics. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of History of Art at the University of Michigan and my BA from the University of British Columbia. I’m also a graduate of MAPH, which I completed in 2009. I am a member of Faculty Forward/SEIU Local 73, the contingent faculty union at the University of Chicago.