Tess Korobkin is assistant professor in the department of Art History & Archaeology, where she teaches courses including American Art from Civil War to Civil Rights and the Big Question course, Monuments, Monumentality and the Art of Memorial. Her research focuses on the art and visual culture of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially histories of sculpture and photography, the politics of materiality, and constructions of race and resistance in American art.

Her current book project, Challenging Monuments: Sculpture, Photography and the Body Public in 1930s America, reveals how minoritized artists working in the Depression era challenged the status quo of U.S. monuments and reimagined public sculpture for a more pluralistic, multiracial, and democratic public sphere.

Dr. Korobkin’s writing has been published in American Art, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, and Art Journal. Her research has been supported by institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Yale Center for British Art, ACLS/Luce Foundation and the Lunder Institute for American Art. Her academic interests in art history grow out of her years as a teaching artist and muralist working with youth in public schools, drug treatment programs, and detention facilities, and as a museum educator. These experiences continue to inform her scholarship and teaching.