Lisa E. Bloom, Ph.D.
Art Historian | Author | Independent Scholar
Berkeley, California | lebloom@berkeley.edu | www.lisaebloom.com
RESEARCH AREAS
Feminist theory; environmental humanities; contemporary art and visual culture; climate change and art; Arctic and Antarctic studies; race, gender, diaspora, colonialism, and memory; Critical Jewish Studies.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1990.
M.F.A., Museum Studies and History of Photography and Video, Rochester Institute of Technology and Visual Studies Workshop, 1985.
B.A., Art History, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, 1980.
BOOKS AND EDITED PROJECTS
Editor, Art for a Changing World: Cross-Generational Conversations on the Environmental Crisis. Special issue of Art Journal, College Art Association, forthcoming Spring 2027.
Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics: Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Free Open Access edition available through Duke University Press.
Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art: Ghosts of Ethnicity. London: Routledge, 2006.
Editor, With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999; Japanese translation, Saiki-sha, 2000.
Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Guest Co-Editor, with Laura Kay and Elena Glasberg, “Gender on Ice: Feminist Approaches to the Arctic and Antarctic,” The Scholar and the Feminist 7.1 (Fall 2008).
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“The Glacier Screams: Toward an Arctic Gothic.” Special issue of Gothic Studies, “Arctic Gothic: Imaginings, Ecologies and Politics,” edited by Monica Germanà and Sara Wasson, forthcoming 2027.
“Introduction: Art for a Changing World: Cross-Generational Conversations on the Environmental Crisis.” Art Journal, forthcoming Spring 2027.
“Artists, Antarctica, and the New Politics of Aesthetics.” In Handbook on the Politics and Governance of Antarctica: The New Strategic Context, edited by Alan D. Hemmings, Peder Roberts, and Klaus Dodds, forthcoming 2027.
“Matthew Henson and the Contaminated Sublime: Race, Sexuality, and Resistance in Isaac Julien’s True North.” In Isaac Julien: I Dream a World. Thames & Hudson, 2025, 129–140.
“Eleanor Antin’s Subversive Art.” In Eleanor Antin Works (1965–2017). Hatje Cantz / Mudam Luxembourg, 2025, 66–81.
“Jewish ‘Ghosts’: Judit Hersko and Susan Hiller and the Feminist Intersectional Art of Post-Holocaust Memory.” Arts 13 (2024), open access.
“Foreword.” In Communicating Ice Through Popular Art and Aesthetics, edited by Anne Hemkendreis and Anna-Sophie Jürgens. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
“Countering Colonial Nostalgia and Heroic Masculinity in the Age of Accelerated Climate Change: The Arctic Artworks of Katja Aglert and Isaac Julien.” Moving Image Review & Art Journal 12.1 (2023): 9–21.
“Envisioning a More Just Future: Feminist Activist Art, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene.” In A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework. Wiley Blackwell, 2023, 227–238.
“A View from the Future: Feminist Artists, Scholars, and Activists Turn to Science Fiction to Address the Climate Crisis.” In Art and Activism in the Twenty-first Century. Routledge, 2022, 314–327.
“At Memory’s Edge: Climate Trauma in the Arctic Through Film.” In The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Climate Change. Routledge, 2021, 194–203.
“Planetary Precarity and Feminist Environmental Art Practices in Antarctica.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56.3 (2020).
“Archives of Knowledge and Endangered Objects in the Anthropocene: From Chernobyl to Polar Landscapes in the Work of Lina Selander and Amy Balkin.” In Arctic Archives: Ice, Memory and Entropy. Columbia University Press, 2019, 269–284.
“Invisible Landscapes: Extreme Oil and the Arctic in Experimental Film and Activist Art Practices.” In Arctic Environmental Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 183–195.
“Antarctica: Feminist Art Practices and Disappearing Polar Landscapes.” In Handbook on the Politics of the Antarctic. Edward Elgar, 2017, 175–190.
SELECTED EARLIER PUBLICATIONS
“When Ice is Just Ice: Gender and the Everyday in the Arctic Art of Katja Aglert.” In Antifreeze. Art and Theory, Stockholm, 2014, 127–133.
“Connie Samaras’ Futures in Extreme Environments: Toward a New Aesthetics of Daily Life and Survival.” In Connie Samaras: Tales of Tomorrow. DAP Press, 2013, 82–86.
“Polar Fantasies and Aesthetics in the Work of Isaac Julien, True North and Fantôme Afrique.” Isaac Julien retrospective catalogue, Associação Cultural Videobrasil, 2012, 92–129.
“Arctic Spaces: Politics and Aesthetics in Gender on Ice and True North.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 26 (2010): 30–37.
“Negotiating Feminisms in Contemporary Asian Women’s Art.” In Feminism and Visual Culture, 2nd ed., edited by Amelia Jones. Routledge, 2010, 14–18.
“Tableaux Vivants, Dying Empires: Eleanor Antin’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Roman Allegories and Helen’s Odyssey (2001–2007).” n.paradoxa 24 (2009).
“Barbies’ Jewish Roots: Jewish Women’s Bodies and Feminist Art.” In Jews and Sex, edited by Nathan Abrams. Five Leaves, 2008, 121–137.
“True North: Isaac Julien’s Aesthetic Wager.” In Isaac Julien: True North. MAK Center for Art and Architecture / Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2005, 7–15.
“Creating Transnational Women’s Art Communities in Asia.” In The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones. Routledge, 2003, 18–21.
“Gender, Race and Nation in Japanese Contemporary Art and Criticism.” In The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff. Routledge, 2002, 215–226.
“Writing Your Own Script: Revisioning the 1970s and the 1980s Through the Work of Eleanor Antin.” In Eleanor Antin. DAP / Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999, 159–189.
“Ghosts of Ethnicity: Rethinking Art Discourses of the 1940s and 1980s.” Socialist Review 94.1–2 (1995): 129–164.
“Constructing Whiteness: Popular Science and National Geographic in the Age of Multiculturalism.” Configurations 2.1 (1994): 15–32.
SELECTED ART AND EXHIBITION REVIEWS
“About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging.” The Brooklyn Rail, September 2019.
“Forest Law.” The Brooklyn Rail, February 2019.
“Martha Rosler and Hito Steyerl: War Games.” The Brooklyn Rail, September 2018.
“Environmental Art at the 56th Venice Biennale.” College Art Association online review journal, May 2016.
SELECTED TEACHING AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
University of California, San Diego, 2002–2012 — Adjunct Professor / Adjunct Associate Professor, Communication and Visual Arts. This was the principal sustained university teaching appointment. Selected courses: Documentary Film and Theory; Photographic Strategies; Histories of Photography; The Price of Remembering and Forgetting; Autobiography, Communities and Communication; Biography and Life Stories; History, Memory and Popular Culture.
University of California, Berkeley, 2017–2024 — Research Associate, Institute for Gender and Sexuality Research, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Organized and led undergraduate research groups on art, climate change, and intersectional approaches, including Art for a Changing World: Conversations on Art and Climate Change Through an Intersectional Lens (2023–2024).
Josai International University, Japan, 1998–2001 — Associate Professor with tenure. Taught in Japan’s first Ph.D. program in Gender and Women’s Studies. Selected teaching areas: feminist theory and methods; gender and race in contemporary visual culture and cinema; Asian American visual culture; women’s studies.
Stanford University — Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor, Art Department, 1993–1995; Adjunct Professor, Art History and Film, 2016. Selected teaching included Visual Culture of the Arctic and courses in contemporary art, visual culture, gender, race, and imperialism.
Brown University / Rhode Island School of Design, 1993 — Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University; Lecturer, Liberal Arts, Rhode Island School of Design. Selected course: Contemporary Art and Theory Since 1975.
University of California, Los Angeles, 2013–2017 — Research Associate, Center for the Study of Women.
Earlier teaching appointments included San Francisco State University, San Francisco Art Institute, University of California, Irvine, and University of California, Santa Cruz.
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS
In Conversation with Ohan Breiding, MASS MoCA, November 8, 2025.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Pratt Institute, April 21, 2025.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Gender Lecture Series, Technical University of Dresden, July 9, 2024.
“Ancient Glaciers and Melting Ice: International Perspectives on the New Polar Aesthetics,” Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, UK, June 5, 2024.
Keynote, “Planet Precarity: Disability, Justice, and Rights,” University of Wollongong, Sydney, Australia, November 29, 2023.
Online book talk with installation artist Judit Hersko and environmental humanities scholar Cheryl J. Fish, environmental humanities initiative, Helsinki, Finland, November 15, 2025.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Royal College of Art, London, October 17, 2023.
“Exploring Intersectional Feminism for an Ecocritical Feminism,” British Association of Art History Reading Group, July 6, 2023.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, University of California, Berkeley, March 22, 2023.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Scandinavia House, New York City, February 16, 2023.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Stanford University, November 28, 2022.
Book Talk, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Södertörn University, Stockholm, November 15, 2022.
“Reclaiming the Arctic through Feminist and Black Aesthetic Perspectives,” Nordic Nature: Art, Ecology, Landscape, Bergen, Norway, June 17, 2022.
Keynote, “Planetary Precarity and Feminist Art Practices in Antarctica,” University of Freiburg, Germany, July 2021.
“At Memory’s Edge: Film and Indigenous Perspectives on the Accelerating Climate Crisis,” Inhuman Screens Online Conference, Sydney, Australia, keynote, September 2020.
“Memory’s Edge: Climate Trauma in Arctic Cinema,” Linnaeus University / Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Copenhagen, February 2020.
“Polar Aesthetics and the Environmental Crisis,” Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, November 2019.
“Jewish ‘Ghosts’ in Antarctica and Germany: Feminist Art Practices and Disappearing Landscapes in the Work of Judit Hersko and Susan Hiller,” Yale University, April 2019.
“Polar Aesthetics: Archives of Knowledge and Disappearances in the Anthropocene,” College Art Association, Los Angeles, February 2018.
“Feminist Polar Aesthetics in the Anthropocene,” HASSEG Conference, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, July 2017.
“True North: Race, Sexuality and Science in Arctic Exploration,” Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, February 2017.
“Gender on Ice Revisited in the Context of Climate Change,” keynote, CircumPolar Gender Conference, Svalbard Polar Museum, Norway, September 2015.
Public Conversation with Isaac Julien on True North and Fantôme Afrique, Associação Cultural Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil, October 2012.
Keynote, “Gender on Ice: 15 Years Later,” Arctic Discourse Conference, University of Tromsø, Norway, February 2008.
“Ghosts of Ethnicity: Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art,” keynote, Practicing Jews: Art, Identity, and Culture, University of Wisconsin–Madison, April 2007.
SELECTED INTERVIEWS AND PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Lisa E. Bloom in Conversation with Kim Anno, San Francisco Art Institute Artists Alumni Series, July 7, 2025. Recorded public conversation on climate change, social justice, experimental film, and the legacy of SFAI.
Interview/profile, The Trinity Reporter, Trinity College alumni magazine, Spring 2025, reflecting on the development of Bloom’s work on climate change, feminist art, and visual culture.
Conversation with Thyrza Goodeve and Elena Glasberg on Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Art Journal.
“A Teachable Book: Integrating Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics into Your Syllabus,” guest teaching guide, Duke University Press, 2022.
Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art selected by the Frick Collection as one of nine books celebrated for Jewish American History Month.
Short recorded talk on African American explorer Matthew Henson for The Call of Things, an interactive living polar archive curated by Jessica Houston.
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Organizer, “Art for a Changing World: Conversations on Art and Climate Change Through an Intersectional Lens,” Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, University of California, Berkeley, 2023–2024.
Organizer, “Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics,” Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, University of California, Berkeley, 2017–2022.
Reviewer, Foundation of Baltic and East European Studies in Sweden, for three-year research projects.
Chair and organizer, “Climate Aesthetics in the Anthropocene,” College Art Association, Los Angeles, 2018.
Guest co-editor and conference co-organizer, “Gender on Ice: Feminist Approaches to Polar Studies,” Barnard College, 2008.
Conference organizer, “Renegotiations: Women Artists and Jewish Identities Across Three Generations,” Jewish Museum, New York City, 2002.