Position
Academic Background
Sample Courses   
Teaching Philosophy
Research & Interests   
Notable Academic Appointments & Awards
Publication Highlights   
Selected Scholarly Presentations

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• Professor of Art History

Academic Background

• Johns Hopkins University -- Ph.D. in Art History, 1983
• Brown University -- M.A. in Art History, 1969
• University of Florence -- Diploma di Proffito, 1967
• University of Rochester -- B.A. in Art History, 1966
  

• Impressionism in the Visual Arts, Music and Literature
• Arts and Crafts Movement, Adventures in Design
• Portraiture, Biography and Autobiography
• Building the American Dream, Domestic Architecture as Index of Identity
• Italian Renaissance Art

Teaching Philosophy

"Learning is a demand of the human soul," Martin Brewer Anderson

Good teaching develops student participation in the life of the mind and allows moments of discovery. Conducting classes as friendly, interesting gatherings makes our exploration of the world of art a compelling adventure.

Research & Interests

• Current research: Preparation of an exhibition for the Grolier Club  "Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros' Eragny Press, 1894-1914" concerning the books of Lucien and Esther Pissarro's Eragny Press, 1894-1914.
• Other interests include the history of design from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, particularly the history of books and printing and the reception of medieval and Renaissance art and ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Dr. Beckwith also serves as President of the New England Chapter of the American Printing History Association and directs their Oral History Project.

Notable Academic Appointments and Awards

• Guest Editor for "Spirituality and the Arts," a special issue of the journal Providence Studies in Western Civilization, Winter, 1996. Associate editor 1994-present.
• Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities project award 2001 for sponsorship of Richard Brilliant's lecture, "Roman Sepulchral Imagery: Hope, Desire, Memory" delivered at Providence College. 
• Fellow of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, 1993, for the Humanist Printer exhibitions at ten Museums and Libraries in Rhode Island.
• Gold Award, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education; and National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to Museums for Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in 19th-Century Britain, Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1985

Publication Highlights

• A History of the Eragny Press, by Marcella Genz, Matrix, XIV, Winter 2004.
• April Blood, Florence and the Plot against the Medici, by Lauro Martines, and The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, by Marco Chiarini et al. Providence: Studies in Western Civilization, VIII, no.1 Spring/Summer, 2003, 100-101.
• John Ruskin, The Later Years, Providence : Studies in Western Civilization,VI, no. 1 Spring/Summer, 2001, 140-141.
• "Fairy Tales and French Impressionism: Medieval Content in Eragny Press Books," in The Year's Work in Medievalism V, ed. Leslie Workman, Kathleen Verduin and Ulrich Muller,Goppingen, Austria:Kummerle Verlag, 1996, pp. 142-152.
• "Pre-Raphaelites, French Impressionists, and John Ruskin, Intersection at the Eragny Press," in Pre-Raphaelite Art in Its European Context, ed.. Susan Casteras and Alicia Faxon, London and Toronto : Associated University Presses, 1995, pp. 175-190.
• "Eragny Press," "St. Dominic's Press," "Vale Press," in British Literary Publishing Houses 1881-1965, ed. Jonathan Rose and Patricia Anderson, Detroit and London:Bruccoli, Clark, Layman Inc. 1991, pp. 109-11, 280-282, 334-336.
• "Pierre August Renoir," in The St. James Guide to Biography,ed. Paul E. Schellinger, Chicago: St. James Press, 1991, pp. 658-659.
• "Germaine Boffrand" and "Guarino Guarini," two essays in Great Lives from History: Renaissance to 1900, Pasadena: Salem Press, 1989, pp.226-230, 980-984.

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Activities

• "Learning from Disaster, Florence in Flood, 1966"  Annual Meeting of the College Art Association (to be presented) February, 2006.
• "Voices from Digital Edge: The American Printing History Association Oral History Project". University of London, School of Advanced Studies, Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies. Conference of the Society for History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. July, 2002. Also at the Museum of Printing, North Andover, Massachusetts. October, 2002.
• "John Ruskin and the London Metaphysical Society". Providence College, Conference on Metaphysics, April, 2002.
• Chair for the session "Morris and the Visual Arts," William Morris society Centenary Conference, Exeter College, Oxford University, June, 1996.
• "The Tool Box Approach to Critical Theory, Deconstruction, Metahistory and William Morris", Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, Austin,,Texas, January, 1995.
• "Nineteenth Century Visions of the Middle Ages". Conference on Medievalism, Leeds University, England, September, 1993.
  

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