Samantha Smith is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Bergen. Her project ‘Understandings of Vision, Blindness and Touch in Early Modern Europe’ investigates how the senses where engaged in artistic activity which produced images that aimed at distributing new knowledge within and between the Catholic Church and Natural Science. The project concentrates on the Italian city of Bologna in early modern Europe where influential actors within the Catholic Church and Natural Sciences emphasised the importance of pictures for communication to the masses.
Samantha graduated in 2014 with an MA in Art History from the University of Bergen with her thesis ‘Painting Blindness and Obscuring Vision: Rembrandt and the Senses’. She is also a member of the research group ´Images of Knowledge´ based at UiB. She has worked as a research assistant at the University of Bergen, Art mediator, and more recently contributed as editor to the book project ‘Images of Knoweledge: The Epistemic Lives of Pictures and Visualisations’.
Interests:
- How blindness as a topos is depicted and understood in Pictorial art.
- Post Tridentine Italy and the affect the Council of Trent had on images in Italy.
- The senses depicted in art.
- How the senses play a role in understanding artistic processes and our experience of images
- The development of natural history seen through images in early modern Europe.
- The establishment of Modern Science in relation to the Catholic Church.
Work:
Ph. D candidate, University of Bergen, from 2017.
Research Assistant University of Bergen 2014-2016.
Art Mediator, Bergen Assembly, 2013.
Education:
MA in Art History, University of Bergen (Norway), 2014.
BA in European Arts (Art History with Study Abroad), University of Kent (UK), 2008.
Publications:
Editorial work:
- Co-editor of Images of Knowledge: the Epistemic Lives of Pictures and Visualisations 2016 Peter Lang GmbH: Frankfurt am Maim. eds. Nora S. Vaage, Rasmus T. Slaatelid, Trine Krigsvoll Haagensen, Samantha L. Smith
Book chapters:
- ‘Images of Knowledge’ in Images of Knowledge: The Epistemic Lives of Pictures and Visualisations. Peter Lang Publishing Group: Frankfurt am Maim, 2016, p. 9-19. Vaage, Nora Sørensen; Slaattelid, Rasmus Tore; Haagensen, Trine Krigsvoll; Smith, Samantha L.
- ‘On Hands That Make Us See: Tobias Healing His Father’s Blindness’ in Images of Knowledge: the Epistemic Lives of Pictures and Visualisations, 2016. Pp51-77. Peter Lang Publishing Group: Frankfurt am Maim. eds. Nora S. Vaage, Rasmus T. Slaatelid, Trine Krigsvoll Haagensen and Samantha L. Smith.
Articles:
- ‘Blinding the Viewer: Rembrandt´s 1628 Self-Portrait’ in Kunst og Kultur pp 144-155, Vol 97 (3), 2015. Universitetetsforlaget, Oslo.