Education
B.A. Sarah Lawrence College and Oxford University
M.A. University College London
Biography
Gabriel Chazan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His dissertation “Devotional Aestheticism: Steinberg, Sontag, Koestenbaum and the Question of a Queer Jewish Art History” considers art writing by three Jewish critics during the AIDS crisis. Drawing on queer theory and Jewish studies, he focuses on Jewish identity, representation, and culture in art history and visual studies. Before arriving at UW–Madison, Gabriel completed his M.A. at University College London (UCL). While there, he wrote the M.A. thesis “Sontag, Etcetera: Towards a Queer and Intersubjective Portrait Photography,” which conceptualized an idea of a “queer gaze” in portraiture through a close analysis of several photographs of the American writer Susan Sontag. He completed his B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College and Oxford University (Sarah Lawrence Program) where he wrote a B.A. thesis on Berenice Abbott. He has taught courses on “Art, Visual Culture and Holocaust” and the “History of Photography” at UW–Madison. He is currently a member of the inaugural educator cohort at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
Research Interests
Jewish Studies, queer studies, history of photography, ekphrasis, intellectual history
Publications
“Review of Jason Lustig’s A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture.” In geveb (2024).
“Review of Rotem Rozental’s Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement,” George L. Mosse Program in History (2023).
“Review of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom,” Triangle House 26, Criticism (2021).
“An Arctic Poetics,” Medium, Vesto Review (2020).
“WAYWARD LIVES, BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS: INTIMATE HISTORIES OF SOCIAL UPHEAV-AL by Saidiya Hartman,” Cleaver Magazine (2019).
“EVERYDAY MADNESS: On Grief, Anger, and Love by Lisa Appignanesi,” Cleaver Magazine (2018).
“BEFORE PICTURES by Douglas Crimp,” Cleaver Magazine (2016).
“THE ARGONAUTS by Maggie Nelson,” Cleaver Magazine (2015).
Courses
ART HIST 355: History and Theory of Photography
ART HIST 430: Art, Visual Culture and Holocaust
Primary Advisor(s)
Jill H. Casid