Institute for Research in the Humanities

Sarah Schaefer

Position title: Universities of Wisconsin Fellow (2024-2025)

Pronouns: She/her

Address:
Associate Professor, Art History, UW–Milwaukee

This is a headshot of a woman with long blond hair and black-framed glasses in front of green background.

Tolkien’s Art Histories

Among the most popular authors of the twentieth century, J. R. R. Tolkien’s (1892–1973) visual art, produced throughout his lifetime and frequently reproduced in publications of and about his work, has long been recognized for its quality and inventiveness. My book project, provisionally titled Tolkien’s Art Histories, would be the first substantive examination of Tolkien’s visual production using art historical methodologies and discourses while engaging with urgent themes in contemporary humanistic discourse (e.g., eco-criticism and the histories of extraction, the cultural manifestations of colonialism and imperialism).

Sarah Schaefer is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century print media, illustration, and religious material culture. She is the author of Gustave Doré and the Modern Biblical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2021) and the co-curator of the 2022 exhibition J. R. R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript (Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University).