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Alison Syme

Associate Professor

University of Toronto Mississauga, Department of Visual Studies

  • Associate Professor
    University of Toronto Mississauga, Department of Visual Studies
  • 905-569-4352 (Work)

BIO

My research primarily focuses on art of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain, France, and the United States. Within this field, I study a range of different topics and traditions, from the neomedievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites to society portraiture to early abstraction. All of my research, however, is characterised by a commitment to close looking, examination of the intersection of art and visual culture, interdisciplinary enquiry, and analysis of the role of metaphors in artistic practice and poetics. My first book, A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art (Penn State University Press, 2010), shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize in 2011, considers Sargent in the context of nineteenth-century botany, gynaecology, literature, and visual culture and argues that the artist mobilised ideas of cross-fertilisation and the hermaphroditic sexuality of flowers in his works to “naturalise” sexual inversion, visually elaborating a floral poetics of homosexuality. I am currently working on my third book, The Sticks and Stones of Edward Burne-Jones, which explores the Victorian artist’s poetics of materials and animation strategies in the context of Victorian geology, print culture, and archaeology. Other current projects include articles on the Omega Workshops and on Impressionism and ecology.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Acting Vice-Dean, Faculty
    University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada1 Jul 2023 - present
  • Acting Chair
    University of Toronto Mississauga, Visual Studies, CanadaJul 2019 - Jun 2020
  • Chair
    University of Toronto Mississauga, Visual Studies, CanadaJul 2014 - Jun 2018
  • Acting Chair
    University of Toronto Mississauga, Visual Studies, CanadaJul 2013 - Jun 2014
  • Associate Professor
    University of Toronto, Visual Studies and Graduate Department of Art History, Canada2010 - present
  • Assistant Professor
    University of Toronto, Visual Studies and Graduate Department of Art History, Toronto, Canada2005 - 2010

DEGREES

  • Hon BA
    University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada1996
  • MA
    Harvard University, Cambridge, United States1999
  • PhD
    Harvard University, Cambridge, United States2005

AVAILABILITY

  • Media enquiries

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