Colin Murray

Colin Murray is interested in the social practices involved in the making of art and the role that language plays in shaping, expanding, and limiting the viewer's perception of that creative act. His dissertation traced the critical reactions of early modern art writers, including theorists, connoisseurs, collectors, and artists, when faced with works of art that were known to have been made by more than one famous hand. Colin's current research is focused on creative forms of labour that were not elevated to the status of art in the early modern period. In particular, he is working on contradictory descriptions and representations of threadwork, including lacemaking and embroidery, which was marginalized as a "domestic craft" even as it was equated with painting, sculpture, and poetry for its inventiveness and design. When Colin teaches, he encourages students not to become fixated on what the image "means", but to become aware of the discourses we use to talk about images in the first place. For this reason, Colin is excited to be helping our undergraduate students develop their writing skills.

Selected Publications

• Spaces of Making and Thinking: Environments of Creative Labor in Early Modern Europe. Co-editor. Forthcoming with BGC Press as part of the Cultural Histories of the Material World Series.
• "Vermeer in the Lacemaker's Studio." In Spaces of Making and Thinking: Environments of Creative Labor in Early Modern Europe. Forthcoming as above.