Maura Coughlin

Maura Coughlin holds a PhD in the History of Art from New York University, a Master’s degree in Art History from Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and in English from UMass Amherst. She was formerly Professor of Visual Studies at Bryant University and is co-editor with Emily Gephart of Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture (Routledge, 2019). Coughlin is a member of the Vienna Anthropocene Network workshop “Towards an Ecocritical Art History.” Her recent research and publications concern French Atlantic visual culture, wastelands, extractivism, cod fishing, salt and seaweed harvesting, coastal ecologies, and the rise of marine sciences in France. Works in progress include a study of French colonial dioramas at the 1867 and 1900 Paris Universal Expositions, a co-edited collection of essays exploring extractive 19th-century visual culture in North America, and a compendium of Object Lessons for teaching ecocritical art history. She co-chairs an interest group devoted to Ecocritical Visual Culture for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE). She is currently co-curating and exhibition devoted to seaweed for the New Bedford Whaling Museum.