Cortney Anderson Kramer (Ph.D., 2022) defended her dissertation titled “It’s Gotta Be In Ya: Heroic Individualism and the Roadside Concrete Sculpture Garden of the American Midwest, 1910–1960” where she challenged modernist notions of artistic individualism through an examination of the oft-classified “outsider” art environments.
Reflecting on the past six years, I am incredibly grateful to the network of advisors and peers who have inspired and encouraged my academic interests at UW–Madison and the Department of Art History. To my dissertation committee members—Ann Smart Martin, Anna Andrzejewski, and Nancy Rose Marshall—thank you for your generous and intellectually rigorous conversations and insight into the complicated territory of outsider art and art environments. I look forward to spending the coming months writing an article inspired by my dissertation research.