02/20/2026
The Department of Art History at Florida State University will host the 42nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium on March 6–7, 2026, on our main campus in Tallahassee, Florida. This annual event features presentations by and discussions with a distinguished keynote speaker and graduate students in art history and related fields from around the country and the world. The Symposium is organized by an elected committee of graduate students and hosted by all Art History students and faculty, sustaining a long tradition of scholarship and hospitality. Papers presented at the Symposium are considered for publication in Athanor, an internationally distributed periodical published by FSU Libraries.
“Telling Time: Periodization, Analogy, and Mesoamerican History”
Friday, March 6, 4pm, 2005 WJB
The Symposium keynote speaker this year will be Claudia Brittenham, Mary R. Morton Professor in the Department of Art History and the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. She is also Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her research focuses on the art of Mesoamerica, with interests in the materiality of art and the politics of style. She is the author of Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, as well as The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico; The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak (with Mary Miller); and Veiled Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color (with Stephen Houston and colleagues). Her next book focuses on the interconnectedness of the ancient Mesoamerican world.
