Emily Brink

Emily Eastgate Brink received her PhD from Stanford University and is currently an Associate Professor in the History of Art at UWA.  Prior to joining the School of Design at UWA, Emily worked as a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, a Mellon Fellow with the Stanford Humanities Center, and as Georges Lurcy Fellow with the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l’Asie Orientale in Paris.  In addition to her teaching and research in the History of Art, Emily has worked as an English instructor and potter’s apprentice in rural Japan, an experience that continues to inform her interest in material meaning, community, and craft.

Roles:

• Deputy Head of Education, School of Design (2022-2024)

• University of Western Australia Academic Staff Association Committee Member (2020-2023)

• Academic Conduct Advisor, School of Design (2019-2024)

• Academic Board (2019-2020)

• Coordinator, History of Art Honours Program, UWA (2018-2019)

• Co-Founder, Eco-matters Research Group, UWA (2018-

Expertise:

• European and Asian exchange in the Modern Era (specifically France and Japan)

• Material Histories

• Histories of Photography

• Theories of Portraiture

• Visual Taxonomies

• Theories of Monstosity and Visual Aberration

• Visualisation of Science in the Late 19^th Century

Broadly conceived, my research addresses systems of knowledge and their visual expression in the nineteenth century.  My work examines how the foreign comes to be known in the modern era, particularly through visual and material exchange. Engaging photography, painting, ceramics, and print, my research explores the European engagement with alterity in the later nineteenth century, with an emphasis on Asian ‘otherness,’ monstrosity, and, more recently, the invisible threat of disease. This work has broad applications to the visual study of science, the history of material economies, and the construction of identity in the modern period.  

In an age of infinite sensory distraction, my units challenge students to stop and take a closer look.  I call this practice of intentional, uninterrupted looking: “the art of sustained attention;” it is a skill that remains crucial to the discipline of art history and a tool that can help students be more thoughtful, critical observers of their own world

In order to help students cultivate this skill, I use a variety of different methods that model and encourage the practice of slow, critical looking within the classroom.  Though I integrate various technologies and web-based platforms to enhance my teaching, I strive to show how a prolonged engagement with a singular object or image can generate a wealth of visual and cultural information.

As an art historian who is deeply invested in the study of materiality, I also emphasize the importance of primary visual material in all my units.  This technique reinforces the notion that paintings, prints, photography, and sculpture exist, not merely as projected images, but also as physical things; through engagement with materiality, students come to understand the importance of an object’s texture, facture, size, or weight. 

My units focus on visual and material studies in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on identity, politics, and urban experience.  I supervise MA and PhD candidates and Honours students working on issues related to visual expression in nineteenth-century Europe and Asia.

HART1003: Ways of Seeing: Themes and Theories in Art

HART2041: The Art of Photography

HART2042/3042: Living Paris: Experiencing and Representing the Modern City

HART2043:  Zen Gardens to Manga Mania: A Survey of Japanese Art

HART2201: Art and Urban Experience

HART3301: Manet and the French Avant-Garde

HART3333: Picturing the Self: Portraiture in Nineteenth-Century Europe

HART4402: Honours Seminar: Writing Art History 

French: Reading, Writing, Speaking

Japanese: Reading, Speaking