University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: March 22, 2007

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

As the first new faculty member to join the Department of Visual Studies since it was created from the merger of the departments of Art and Art History last spring, Nancy Anderson is on a mission to help UB become one of the first universities in North America to offer a doctorate in her department's unique and emerging field of study.

Although trained as an art historian, Nancy Anderson, an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Studies, has made the history of scientific imaging her specialty.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

Although trained as an art historian, Anderson, an assistant professor in the department, has made the history of scientific imaging her specialty. And it is through this linking of art and science that she found her way to the new field of visual studies. A field that has emerged over the past two decades, visual studies looks beyond traditional works of art, such as painting and sculpture, to encompass the critical analysis of images in all media, contexts and cultures, as well as the history of vision and imaging technologies. There currently are about 25 universities in the United States and Canada that grant undergraduate or graduate degrees in the subject.

The emergence of the field of visual studies recognizes a need to address visual culture more broadly, Anderson says. There is a growing demand to bring visual acumen to a variety of social categories—mass culture, art history and the sciences—she notes, and says that the UB department hired her "because of its cutting-edge commitment to founding a program that will prepare students for working in a world that increasingly communicates through visual media. I'm excited to be a part of this endeavor."

The recipient of a doctorate in the history of art from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Anderson explains that her own shift from studying fine art to studying images of science began when she became a project administrator for an ethics program at the University of Michigan Medical School. "It was at this time that I began meeting and talking to scientists in their laboratories and, as it turned out, geneticists spend a lot of their time making and talking about images," she says. "I became fascinated by this other world of picture-making and so I decided to shift my research to the history of science, specifically to historical issues of imaging techniques in microscopy." She first sat in on a couple of biology courses—genetics and biochemistry—and then joined classes in the history and philosophy of science and medicine. By that time she had switched her dissertation topic to cell imaging and the rise of improved microscopes and biological dyes in the second half of the 19th century.

She later relocated to the West Coast, where she became more involved in the history of science through scholars at Stanford University. One project she undertook with fellow historians, cell biologists and digital artists was an exhibition called "Transgenic Light," held at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford in 2002. The exhibition focused on the imaging capabilities of a gene known as "green fluorescent protein," or GFP, which had been taken from a jellyfish and made into a molecular marker when spliced into the genetic code of other animals. "Transgenic Light" included images made by scientists using GFP. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the show, she recalls, "was the display of live fruit flies with the GFP gene inserted into their genome. Their eyes glowed green."

In late 2002, Anderson left Stanford for research fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin-one of the foremost institutes in its field in the world-and the Institute for the History of Medicine and Health in Geneva, Switzerland. It was during this time that she began to focus her research on the development of electronic imaging and fluorescent technologies in cell biology since 1945. She returned to the United States in 2005 and spent last year as the William H. Morton Senior Research Fellow in the Leslie Humanities Center at Dartmouth College, working with historians, philosophers of biology and film and art historians on a project called "Visual Culture and Pedagogy in the Life Sciences." She is co-editing for publication the essays that were produced from this project. Anderson joined the UB faculty this past fall.

The official proposal for a doctoral program in visual studies—slated for submission to the state this summer or early fall—is the largest project that Anderson is working on at UB.

"It's wonderful to know that the momentum is here within my department and throughout the campus," she says. "And it is a great time to join the UB faculty. When I arrived in August, I immediately picked up on a real campuswide ambition to build the future of the academy. One way this is happening is by developing Ph.D. programs like the one in visual studies. Such programs can only enhance the research and teaching activities of this university."

This semester, Anderson is teaching a course entitled "Instant Image: From Snapshot to Telepresence," which traces the historical roots of the attempts to capture and manage time through imaging technologies—from instantaneous photography from around 1880 through current-day "live" television and "real-time" computer activity. Artists who have addressed issues of instantaneity and simultaneity, such as the futurists and early video artists, also are discussed. "In the next year or so, I will develop a course that will very explicitly involve scientific and biological imagery," she adds.

Her current projects include a book chapter about an unusual connection made in the early 1960s between the architect Buckminster Fuller and two scientists at Cambridge who, through electron microscopy, were studying what viruses looked like. The scientists surmised that virus shells must have a shape that was simple to assemble and extremely sturdy. This eventually brought them in contact with Fuller and his designs, specifically the geodesic dome.

"What they discovered," Anderson says, "was that many viruses, in essence, live in geodesic domes." She will present this research at a conference on science and visualization to be held in May in Italy. Collaborating on future projects on the intersection of art and science is something Anderson is looking forward to doing at UB.

A resident of the West Side of Buffalo—she lives near Elmwood Avenue and the Lexington Co-op—Anderson says being a native of suburban Detroit eased her adjustment to the city. "I've certainly met a lot of people," she says, noting that discovering things to do downtown has been a favorite pastime the past several months.

"I have wonderful colleagues, colleagues whom I already consider friends," she says. "A couple of us have met to go to the ice-skating rink downtown. I haven't skated in a million years and it's been a lot of fun."