Temple University

Nicole Emser Marcel (she/her) is a PhD candidate studying the modern and contemporary art of the Caribbean. Her dissertation traces the systematic practices of ordering Caribbean land, from the colonial to the present, mapping the visual and material strategies of resistance utilized by artists as a method of repossessing historical narratives and the land. Her research and professional development have been supported by the Stanford University Libraries, the Huntington Library, the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale, the Clements Library, the French Colonial Historical Society, and the Temple Graduate School. 

She is a current member of the Student and Emerging Professionals Committee of the College Art Association (CAA) and serves as their representative on the Annual Conference Committee. She also served as the co-president of Art History Graduate Organization (AHGO) from January 2022-January 2023 and vice president the year prior. 

She previously taught art history courses at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and served as the program director for the National Women’s History Museum in Washington, DC. 

MA, Art History, American University, 2011 

BA, History, Xavier University, 2007 

Dissertation Title: “Ordering, Reordering, and Disordering the Land: Visual and Material Strategies of Resistance and Repossession in Contemporary Caribbean Art” 

Advisor: Alpesh Kantilal Patel