Department of History

April F. Masten

April Masten is Associate Professor of American History at Stony Brook University. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University, an M.A. in the Social History of Art from Leeds University, and a B.A. in Music from San Francisco State University.

Research Interests

Masten’s scholarship explores the interplay between cultural production and political economies. Her article “Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art,” which won the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association 2005 Article Prize, connects the nationalism inspired by Jacksonian democracy to the success and decline of a female visual artist. Her book, "Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York" (Penn Press, May 2008), reconnects the accomplishments of the hundreds of women artists who studied and worked in New York City between 1850 and 1880 to the city's conspicuously democratic art institutions, burgeoning illustrated press, and the prevailing aesthetic ideal - the Unity of Art.

In 2005 Masten was invited by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals to speak on the challenges of interdisciplinary writing at the Modern Language Association Conference in Washington D.C. Her current research explores the exchange of dance and music among African, Irish, and Native North Americans.

Publications

Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2008. Book page URL: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14454.html

“Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art”, American Quarterly 56:2 (June 2004), 349-394. href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v056/56.2masten.pdf

“Dancing Through American History,” Common-Place > www.common-place.org < vol. 6, no. 1, October 2005. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/vol-06/no-01/school/

“Model into Artist: The Changing Face of Art Historical Biography,” Women’s Studies 21: 1 (1992), 17-41. http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.cc.stonybrook.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=JN+%22Women's+Studies%22+and+DT+19920301&type=0&site=ehost-live

The Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, American National Biography, and Newsday.

E-Mail

april.masten@sunysb.edu

Office

SBS S-313

Phone

631-632-7483

Fax

631-632-7367