Professor Karin Zitzewitz named Chair of Department

The Department warmly welcomes Professor Zitzewitz as its new permanent Chair

We are excited to welcome Professor Karin Zitzewitz to College Park and the Department as its newest permanent Chair. Professor Zitzewitz was named Chair by Dean Shonekan following an exhaustive nationwide search. Zitzewitz is a specialist in the modern and contemporary art of India and Pakistan. An art historian, anthropologist and curator, her latest research is collected in “Infrastructure and Form: The Global Networks of Indian Contemporary Art, 1991-2008” (University of California Press, 2022). Her earlier books are “The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India” (Hurst/Oxford, 2014) and “The Perfect Frame: Presenting Indian Art: Stories and Photographs from the Kekoo Gandhy Collection” (Chemould, 2003). Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the European Research Council, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Fulbright program. Zitzewitz recently joined UMD from Michigan State University, where she was a faculty member in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. She received her doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 2006.

In welcoming Professor Zitzewitz, we also thank Professor Saggese for her wonderful job directing the Department for the past year and wish her all the best as she assumes her new role as Director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. Good luck to you both!