Kathryn Kramer, Associate Professor of Art History, Modern and Contemporary Art, Critical Theory, (Ph.D. Columbia University)

email: kramerk@cortland.edu

Professor Kathryn Kramer is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art. She received the Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University in 1993. Her dissertation, Mythopoetic Politics in the Late Work of Paul Klee, examines Klee's adaptation of mythical imagery as an aesthetic strategy for opposing the visual language of Nazism. Professor Kramer also has focused on the marketing of Klee's work by German émigré art dealers in the United States after World War II. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Starr Foundation, the research foundations of Columbia University and SUNY Cortland supported this research, and it has been published in exhibition catalogues, journals, and book chapters.

Professor Kramer’s current research investigates contemporary artists’ revival of flânerie (the practice of wandering through rapidly modernizing cities as a means toward the aesthetic assessment and representation of urban transformation), especially in globalizing cities of explosive growth. She received a Research Enrichment and Development Initiative Fellowship (REDI) for 2008-2009 to focus this research on Shanghai. Entitled “Flânerie Shanghai Style,” Professor Kramer’s project is in two parts. The first part comprises an essay that will present the practice and artistic production of flânerie in contemporary Shanghai as a cultural metric of urban dynamism. Artistic flânerie’s extent and representational focus will be illustrated, discussed and contextualized. The second part comprises the design of a website that will present information regarding the connections between art and urbanism among Shanghainese artists, artists’ collectives, art theorists, art dealers, blogs, gallery and museum exhibitions, city-based biennial exhibitions, and art fairs. Future analysis in terms of artistic flânerie will include Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Mumbai, and Melbourne.

Professor Kramer received the Rozanne M. Brooks Dedicated Teacher Award in 2007. The Brooks Award supported her travel to the Venice Biennale and the Documenta exhibitions of international contemporary art during the summer and fall of 2007. She developed a new course, “Contemporary Art and Globalization,” offered during the Fall 2008 semester, based in part upon a close study of these important exhibitions.