Staci Gem Scheiwiller is an Associate Professor of Modern Art History in the Art Department at California State University, Stanislaus. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2009. Her field is Modern and Contemporary Art with an emphasis in Iranian art and photography and a minor field in Islamic Art. She is currently writing her second monograph, in which she continues her research on gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century Iranian photography, hopefully composing the most feminist manifesto on this topic. Her most recent publications include Liminalities of Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography: Desirous Bodies (Routledge, 2017), an edited volume with Markus Ritter entitled The Indigenous Lens? Early Photography in the Near and Middle East (De Gruyter, 2017), and another edited volume, Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity (Anthem Press, 2013).

University of California, Santa Barbara

Ph.D., History of Art, 2009
Dissertation: “Mirrors of Memory: Nineteenth-Century Imagery in Contemporary Iranian Photography”
Committee: Robert Williams, John Foran, Laurie Monahan, and Miriam Wattles
Concentrations: Modern and Contemporary Iran, History of Photography, Contemporary and Modern Art and Theory, Gender, and Postcolonialism; Minor in Islamic Art
 

University of California, Riverside

M.A., History of Art, 2001
Thesis: “Revisiting American Atrocities in Photography and Film: Other and Difference in the Vietnam War Legacy of the United States”
Committee: Amelia Jones, Jonathan Green, and Katherine Kinney
Concentrations: the United States, Contemporary Art, Photography, Visual Culture, and Film; Constructions of Race, Gender, and Nation in Art
 

University of Southern California

B.A., Art History, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1999
Concentrations: Gender in Contemporary and Italian Renaissance Art, Postcolonialism, Islam, and the Middle East

Associate Professor, California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA (2011-Present)

  • ART 2515—Art Hist Survey-Ancient. Total enrollment of 51
  • ART 2520—Art Hist Survey-Modern. Total enrollment of 51
  • ART 2522—Art Hist Survey-Contemporary. Total enrollment of 51
  • ART 2525—Art Hist Survey-Nonwestern. Total enrollment of 51
  • ART 2526—Art Hist Survey-Islamic. Total enrollment of 51
  • ART 2530—Art Appreciation. Total enrollment of 50
  • ART 4070/GEND 4070—Women and Gender in the History of Art I: Europe and North America. Total enrollment 32
  • ART 4080/GEND 4080—Women and Gender in the History of Art II: Global and Transnational Contexts. Total enrollment 32
  • ART 4400—New Media Theory. Total enrollment 24
  • ART 4500—Art, Museums, and Society. Total enrollment 25.
  • ART 4540—Modern Art, 1800-1870. Total enrollment of 40
  • ART 4545—Modern Art, 1870-1970. Total enrollment of 40
  • ART 4548—Global Modernisms. Total enrollment of 40
  • ART 4550—Art of the Postmodern Era. Total enrollment of 40
  • ART 4555—American Art. Total enrollment of 70
  • ART 4562—Islamic Art. Total enrollment of 40
  • ART 4570—Senior Seminar in Art History (WP). Total enrollment of 24
  • ART 4920—Art in Action. Total enrollment of 20
  • ART 4960—Senior Seminar (WP). Total enrollment of 24
  • GEND 4930—Studies in Activism: Comparative Contemporary Feminist Activism. Total enrollment of 25

Books:

Refereed:
  • Liminalities of Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography: Desirous Bodies (New York: Routledge, 2017)
  • Co-Editor (with Markus Ritter), The Indigenous Lens: Early Photography in the Near and Middle East (University of Zurich Press, published by De Gruyter, 2017)
  • Editor, Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity (London: Anthem Press, 2013)
Invited:
  • Mirrors with Memories: Nineteenth-Century and Qajar Imagery in Contemporary Iranian Photography (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011)

Book Chapters:

Refereed:
  • “(Neo)Orientalism: Alive and Well—A Case Study of Contemporary Iranian Art,” in Middle East Studies after September 11: Neo-Orientalism, American Hegemony and Academia, ed. Tugrul Keskin (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 194-213
  • “Relocating Sevruguin: The Political Climate of the Iranian Photographer Antoin Sevruguin (c. 1851- 1933),” in The Indigenous Lens: Early Photography in the Near and Middle East, ed. Markus Ritter and Staci Gem Scheiwiller (University of Zurich Press, published by De Gruyter, 2017), 121-43
  • “The Archaeological Spaces of Photography: Portrayals of Nineteenth-Century Iranian Women in the Images of Photographer Yassaman Ameri,” in Home/Land: Women, Citizenship, Photographies, ed. Marion Arnold and Marsha Meskimmon (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 139-54
  • “Photographing the Other Half of the Nation: Gendered Politics of the Royal Photograph Albums of Nineteenth-Century Iran,” in The Photograph and the Album, ed. Jonathan Carson et al. (Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc, 2013), 30-74
  • “Cartographic Desires: Some Reflections on the Shahr-e Farang (Peepshow) and Modern Iran,” in Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity, ed. Staci Gem Scheiwiller (London: Anthem Press, 2013), 33-54
  • “In the House of Fatemeh: Revisiting Shirin Neshat’s Photographic Series Women of Allah,” in Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity, ed. Staci Gem Scheiwiller (London: Anthem Press, 2013), 201-20
  • “Reframing the Rise of Modernism in Iran,” in Modernism beyond the West: A History of Art from Emerging Markets, ed. Majella Munro (London: Enzo Arts and Publishing, 2012), 11-32
Invited:
  • “Depictions of Africans in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography: The Consequences of Orientalism(s), Colonialism(s), and Panopticism on Shifting Representations of Race and Islam,” in The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Race (forthcoming 2023)
  • “Disrupting Bodies, Negotiating Spaces: Performance Art in Tehran,” in Performing Iran: Cultural Identity and Theatrical Performance, ed. Babak Rahimi (London: I.B. Tauris, 2021), 113-27, 227-9
  • “Performing the Past: Historical Performativity and Corporeality in the Photographs of Shadafarin Ghadirian, Afshan Ketabchi, and Arman Stepanian,” in Contemporary Iranian Photography: Five Perspectives, ed. Abbas Daneshvari (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2017), 83-98
  • “The Online Avant-Garde: Iranian Video Art and Its Technological Rebellion,” in Social Media in Iran: Politics and Society after 2009, ed. David M. Faris and Babak Rahimi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 271-85
  • “Is there a PostIslamic Art, Or Are We Post-Islamic Art? Time and the Condition of ‘Contemporary Islamic Art,’” in Global Trends in Modern and Contemporary Islamic Art, ed. Rui Oliveira Lopes et al. (Lisbon: Centro de Investigação e Estudos em Belas-Artes, 2015), 109-39

Journal Articles:

Refereed:
  • “Modern Family: The Transformation of the Family Photograph in Qajar Iran (1785-1925),” Trans Asia Photography Review 9, no. 1 (Fall 2018): http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0009.109
Invited:
  • “Khiaban-e dotarafeh: Safar ba tarikh dar aksha-ye Jalali [A two-way street: Traveling with history in Bahman Jalali’s photographs],” Aksnameh 7, no. 30 (1388/2010): 30-3

Exhibition Catalogues and Essays:

  • “Quoting Silences: Depicting Female Desires in the Paintings of Abelina Galustian,” in Abelina Galustian: Womansword and Beyond (Turlock: California State University, Stanislaus, 2020), 15-17
  • “Visual Sisters of Iran Zamin: Rewriting Women, Death, and Martyrdom in Shirin Neshat's The Book of Kings and Women of Allah,” in Shirin Neshat: Frauen in Gesellschaft, ed. Heide Barrenechea (Tübingen: E. Wasmuth, 2017), 107-19
  • “A White Peril: Re-Scripting the White Postcolonial Subject in Aliza Levi’s Artwork,” in Books on a White Background: Aliza Levi (Cape Town: South African Jewish Museum, 2015), unpaginated
  • “The Limits of Sight, Knowing, and Possession: The Photographs of Mohammad Reza Tahmasbpour,” in Mohammad Reza Tahmasbpour: Composing Poetry with Photographs (Claremont: California State University, 2014), 7-10
  • Editor, Modern Art, 1800-1870: Undergraduate Papers on Nineteenth-Century Art (Claremont: California State University, 2014), 4-6
  • “The Semiotics of Defiance: The Performances of Amitis Motevalli,” in Amitis Motevalli: Porru (Claremont: California State University, 2013), 6-11
  • “Miyan-e Mahdoudiat-ha ya Marz-ha? Contested Agency in Contemporary Iranian Art,” in We are Standing outside of Time: An Ongoing Artistic Collaboration between: Shahram Entekhabi, Behrang Samadzadegan, ed. Shahram Entekhabi (Linz: Atelierhaus Salzamat, 2012), 8-11
  • “A Photographic Transformation of American Photographer Carolyn Gledhill: The Rise of the ‘New Woman’ in the Gledhill Portraits,” in Portraits in Paradise: The Photography of Carolyn and Edwin Gledhill, 1906-1944 (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Historical Museum, 2010): 5-16

Book Reviews:

  • Book Review, “Archiving Donna Stein,” Women: A Cultural Review, DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2072624
  • Book Review, “Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices against Oppression,” Women: A Cultural Review 22, no. 4 (2011): 441-5
  • Book Review, “On Iranian Women,” Women: A Cultural Review 20, no. 2 (2009): 231-3
  • Book Review, “Iran in the 1930s: Exploring Iran: The Photography of Erich F. Schmidt, 1930-1940,” History of Photography 33, no. 1 (February 2009): 103-5

Extramural Awards:

  • Die Käthe Leichter-Gastprofessur für Gender Studies, Winter 2014-15
    Guest Professor of Gender Studies at the Art History Institute of the University of Vienna
  • Certificate of Excellence in Student Support, Mount San Antonio College, 2011
  • Critical Language Scholarship (State Department), Summer 2008
    Study Persian and Tajiki in Tajikistan
  • Mina Houtan Scholarship, Houtan Scholarship Foundation, Fall 2007
    $2,500 award from a private organization for graduate students conducting research on any topic on Iran
  • Persian Language Fellowship in Tehran, American Institute of Iranian Studies, Fall 2004
  • FLAS Language Fellowship, Ohio State University, Summer 2004
  • Elks’ Most Valuable Student, Elks National Foundation, 1995-99
    $1,000 scholarship every semester for four years

At CSUSTAN

  • Sabbatical, Fall 2019
    Write manuscript of second monograph on the photographs of royal women in nineteenthcentury Iran
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Fall 2018
    $600 to participate in two panels at the Slavery and Sexual Servitude in the Middle East and North Africa, UCSB, Santa Barbara, October 2018
    $700 to participate in two panels at the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) 12th Biennial Conference, Irvine, August 2018
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Spring 2018
    $1000 to participate in a panel at the College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles
  • Center for Excellence in Graduate Education (CEGE) Graduate Assistantship (GA), Fall 2017
    Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Student Jessica Curtis is GA for Spring 2018
  • Center for Excellence in Graduate Education (CEGE) Graduate Assistantship (GA), Fall 2014
    Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Student Benjamin Jameson-Ellsmore is GA for Spring 2015
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Fall 2014
    $700 to participate in the College Art Association’s Diversity Practices Committee in NY, NY
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Fall 2014
    $1000 to chair a panel and to present at the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) 10th Biennial Conference, Montreal, Canada
  • Center for Excellence in Graduate Education (CEGE) Graduate Assistantship (GA), Fall 2013
    Psychology Graduate Student Veronica Higareda is GA for Spring 2014
  • Graduation Rate/Student Success Initiative Grant, Fall 2013
    $10,000 to support an Artist-in-Residence with Amitis Motevalli that will improve art major success rates
  • Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Grant, Fall 2013
    $5000 grant to conduct research in repositories in Europe and Los Angeles
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Fall 2013
    $700 to participate in the College Art Association’s Diversity Practices Committee in Chicago, IL
  • Dean’s Travel Initiative, Spring 2013
    $700 to participate in the College Art Association’s Diversity Practices Committee in New York City
  • Certificate of Excellence as an Associated Student Incorporated Board of Director, Spring 2013 Center for Excellence in Graduate Education (CEGE) Graduate Assistantship (GA), Fall 2012
    History Graduate Student Douglas Johnson was GA for Spring 2013
  • Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Grant, Fall 2011
    $4400 grant to conduct research in repositories in Europe and Los Angeles

At UCSB

  • Brython Davis Graduate Fellowship, Fall 2007
    $5,000 fellowship and fees paid for one quarter
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, Summer 2007
    $1,579 grant to travel to Canada for an interview with Photographer Yassaman Ameri
  • Departmental ABD Grant, 2006-07
    $10,000 for field research in Iran
  • Graduate Opportunity Fellowship, 2003-04
    $14,500 fellowship and fees paid for one academic year
  • Art History Club Mentorship Award, 2003
  • Best Graduate Student in Persian, 2003
  • VIDDA Fellowship, Spring 2002
    $4000 stipend and fees paid for one quarter

At UCR

  • Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, 1999-2000
    $8,100 fellowship and fees paid for one academic year

At USC

  • Louise Kerckoff Prize (Gender Studies Essay Award), 1998
    Award for essay on female genital mutilation

  • Refereed: “Photography and Prostitution in Qajar Iran (1785-1925),” Slavery and Sexual Servitude in the Middle East and North Africa, UCSB, Santa Barbara, October 2018
  • Roundtable Discussant, Slavery and Sexual Servitude in the Middle East and North Africa, UCSB, Santa Barbara, October 2018
  • “Photographing the Queens of Iran: Mahd-e ʿOlya (1805-73) and Anis al-Dowleh (1842-97),” Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) 12th Biennial Conference, Irvine, August 2018
  • Panel Chair, “Art, Literature, and Visual Culture,” Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) 12th Biennial Conference, Irvine, August 2018
  • Discussant, “From the Phonograph to Telegram: Publics in Old and New Media,” Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) 12th Biennial Conference, Irvine, August 2018
  • “Imperium Camera: How Photography Revolutionized Islamicate Empires in the Nineteenth Century,” College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, February 2018
  • Convener, “Gendered Counternarratives of Representation in Qajar Society,” International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) 11th Biennial Conference, Vienna, Austria, August 2016
  • Panel Co-Chair with Nancy Micklewright, “Constructing Islamicate Visualities in Nineteenth-Century Photography: Tracing Photographic Developments in Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empire,” Photography’s Shifting Terrain: Emerging Histories & New Practices, NYU Abu Dhabi, March 2015
  • “Was There an Islamicate Aesthetic of Photography? Constructing Modern Photographic Identities of the Empires,” Photography’s Shifting Terrain: Emerging Histories & New Practices, NYU Abu Dhabi, March 2015
  • Panel Chair, “Iranian Photography of the Long Century: Expressing a World in Flux,” International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) 10th Biennial Conference, Montreal, Canada, August 2014
  • “Deconstructing Antoin Sevruguin: Reconsidering the Liminality of Sevruguin and His Photographs of Iran,” International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) 10th Biennial Conference, Montreal, Canada, August 2014
  • “Ottoman and Qajar Modernisms: A Comparison that Provincializes Europe,” Likeness and Difference: Modern Art of the Middle East and the Confines of Modernism, Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Turkey, and Iran, Third Annual Conference, New York City, October 2013
  • “The Iranian Indigenous Lens of the Nineteenth Century: Possibility or Moot Point?” Society for Photographic Education Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, March 2013
  • Scheiwiller5 “In Subversive Spaces: Photographic Portrayals of Nineteenth-Century Iranian Women in the Images of Photographer Yassaman Ameri,” Home/Land: Women, Citizenship, Photographies, Loughborough University, UK, July 2012
  • “Performing the Past: Historical Performativity and Corporeality in the Photographs of Shadafarin Ghadirian, Afshan Ketabchi, and Arman Stepanian,” Iranian Contemporary Art - Searching for Identity? Bonn University, Germany, May 2012
  • “Reframing the Rise of Modernism in Iran,” Association of Art Historians (AHH) Annual Conference, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, March 2012 Panel Co-Chair with Pamela Karimi, “The Body as a Site of Political Intervention in Contemporary Middle Eastern Art,” College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, February 2012
  • “Gender, Beauty, and Desire: The Camera and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography,” Art Historians of Southern California Annual Conference, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, November 2011
  • “An Entangled Legacy: Shadi Ghadirian’s ‘Qajar’ Series and the Anxiety of Patriarchal History in Iran,” 7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities, Honolulu, HI, January 2009
  • “Some Reflections on the Shahr-e Farang and the Modernization of Iran,” Art History Graduate Student Association Symposium, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 2004
  • “Hejab and the Media,” Historians of Islamic Art (HIA), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, February 2002
  • Invited: Moderator, “Donna Stein Discusses The Empress and I: How an Empire Collected, Rejected and Rediscovered Modern Art,” Chevalier’s Books, Los Angeles, May 2021
  • “Photography between Borders: Armenian Photographers in Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empire,” Continuity and Rupture: An Armenian Family Odyssey, Brand Library, Glendale, February 2018
  • “New Media Art in Iran,” Digital Persianate, University of California, San Diego, January 2018
  • “To Veil or Not to Veil? The Fine Line between the Local and the Global and between Lived Experience and Neo-Orientalism in Images of the Veil in Contemporary Middle Eastern Art,” The Religious Life of Fashion, University of Salzburg, Austria, May 2015
  • “Iranian Performance Art and Video Art in Global, Local, and Transnational Contexts,” Between Literature and Theater: Performing Iran, University of California, San Diego, February 2014

Master’s Committees:

  • Thesis Adviser, Camila Albertini’s master’s thesis committee (2021-present), “Queering Mary Cassatt,” Interdisciplinary Studies, CSU Stanislaus
  • Thesis Adviser, Jessica Curtis’ master’s thesis committee (2017-2020), ‘“Our Perception Matters as Well!’ An Historiography of American Academic Feminist Interpretations of Early Modern Women of Italy (1400-1700),” Interdisciplinary Studies, CSU Stanislaus
  • Thesis adviser, Lisa Sonnberger’s master’s thesis committee (2015-18), “Anis al-Dawla’s Visuality. A Nineteenth–Century Empowered Harem Woman in Photography,” University of Vienna, Art History
  • Thesis Adviser, Benjamin Jameson-Ellsmore’s master’s thesis committee (2014-16), “PseudoPublic: Public Spaces as Self-Contradictory Enclosures,” Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Second Reader, Alysha Bergeson’s master’s thesis committee (2012-14), “Advertised Identity: A Postmodern Feminist Analysis of Food Advertisements from Women’s Magazines during the 1950s, 1960s, and 2000s,” Environment and Community, California State University, Humboldt

McNair Scholar Faculty Mentor and Adviser:

  • Bethany Saint-Smith’s thesis (2021-present), “How do Representations of Skin Tone Negatively Impact Discourses of Colorism and the Social Mobility of Black Women?” CSU Stanislaus
  • Sasha Thompson’s thesis (2021-present), “Slow Curating: Rethinking the Concepts in which Modern Works are Exhibited,” CSU Stanislaus

Extramural Committees:

  • Rhonda A. Saad Prize For Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art Selection Committee (2021-present)
  • International Society for Iranian Studies 2016 Program Committee (2015-16)
  • Committee on Diverse Practices (2013-16), College Art Association
  • Central California Officer (2011-12), Art Historians of Southern California

At CSUSTAN:

  • Director, Art History Program (2021-present)
  • Chair, Tenure-Track Search Committee, Arts of the Americas (2021-22)
  • Faculty Adviser, Queer Art Collective/Club (Spring 2019-Summer 2021)
  • CAHSS Budget and Planning Committee (2018-22)
  • Instructional-Related Activities (IRA) Committee (2017-2020)
  • Interdisciplinary Studies Committee (2016-Present)
  • Gender Studies Faculty Associate (2015-Present)
  • Faculty Adviser, Feminists’ Equality Club (2015-17)
  • Associated Students, Inc. (2013)
  • Affirmative Action/Diversity Committee (2012-16)
  • CAHSS Committee on Committees (2012-16); Chair (2013-14); (2022-present)
  • Senator, Academic Senate (2012-14)
  • Faculty Adviser, Art Club (2012-14)
  • Department Curriculum Committee (2012-14; 2015-18; 2020-21); Chair (2020-21)
  • Department Search Committee (2012-14)
  • Student Success Committee (2012-13)
  • University Art Gallery Committee (2011-14, 2021-22)
  • Department Scholarship Committee (2011-present); Chair: 2018

Work by Dr. Staci Gem Scheiwiller:

art by Staci Gem Scheiwiller
work by Staci Gem Scheiwiller
work by Staci Gem Scheiwiller