Research
Dr. Rebecca J. DeRoo is William A. Kern Professor in Communications and Director of the Visual Culture Program. Her research and teaching integrate multiple fields of Visual Communication: Visual Culture, Cinema Studies, Contemporary Art, History of Photography, Exhibition Studies, and Critical Theory.
She has a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. DeRoo has published widely on contemporary cinema, visual culture, multimedia art, and exhibitions. Her book, Agnès Varda between Film, Photography, and Art (University of California Press, 2018) was finalist for the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Best Book Award in the field of Moving Image. Book research was supported by fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Paul A. and Francena L. Miller Fellowship.
In 2021, Professor DeRoo coedited with Professor Homay King a thematic issue of Camera Obscura titled Future Varda. Her recent essays appear in the anthologies Plaisirs de Femmes and On Women's Films, and in the catalogue Viva Varda! published for the 2023-24 retrospective exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française. She has contributed to publications including The Oxford Art Journal, Parallax, Studies in French Cinema, Modern and Contemporary France, and Afterimage, where she serves on the editorial board.
Professor DeRoo’s first book, The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art (Cambridge: 2006, translated, reprinted 2014), explains how the protests and social movements of 1968 France triggered a radical reconsideration of artistic practice that has shaped both art and museums up to the present. Her book was awarded the 2007 Laurence Wylie Prize for best book in the field of French Cultural Studies.
Dr. DeRoo was Community Curator for the major exhibition: Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World, held at the Rochester Museum & Science Center. Her students’ work was presented in the exhibition, including the digital Map of Change. Dr. DeRoo curated the exhibition Beyond The Photographic Frame at the Art Institute of Chicago via a Rhoades Foundation Fellowship; curated Made in France: Art from 1945 to the Present at the Washington University Art Museum; and co-curated with Jurij Meden a retrospective, Agnès Varda: (Self-)Portraits, Facts and Fiction, at the Dryden Theatre, George Eastman Museum (2016). Her grants include Fulbright and Killam Fellowships and a research residency at the French National Institute for Art History (INHA).
Books
Agnès Varda between Film, Photography, and Art
University of California Press, 2018.
Finalist for the Kraszna-Krausz Award for Best Book in the Field of Moving Image.
Summary: Agnès Varda between Film, Photography, and Art forges interdisciplinary histories of cinema, multi-media art, and exhibitions, unraveling the multi-media nature of contemporary artistic production and its innovative modes of exhibition. It is a study of the celebrated multimedia artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda, best known as a foundational figure of the French New Wave film movement of the 1950s and 60s, and for her recent multimedia art exhibitions. Integrating material and methods from cinema studies and art history with extensive research in Varda’s personal archives, the book examines alternate aspects of her oeuvre: her unacknowledged references to art and visual culture (painting, advertising, photography, and film) and engagement with contemporary cultural politics. Moreover, the book interprets her multimedia work’s innovative boundary-crossing between narrative cinema and contemporary art exhibition.
Select Book Reviews:
Jenny Chamarette, French Screen Studies, September 28, 2021 (online).
Marion Schmid, French Studies, vol. 7 no. 2 (April 2020): 336.
Ray Balstad, Women in French Studies, Volume 26, 2018: 172-174.
Brittany Murray, ASAP Journal, September 9, 2018 (online).
The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic Display in France after 1968
Cambridge University Press, 2006. Paperback edition, 2014.
Two translations, 2013-2014.
Awarded Laurence Wylie Book Prize in French Cultural Studies, 2006-2007.
Summary: The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art provides new perspectives on how the protests that shook France in 1968—the largest political insurrections in the modern West—precipitated a radical reconsideration of artistic practice that has shaped both art and museum exhibitions up to the present. The text illuminates how these tumultuous political events generated a reassessment of concepts of public history and national identity. Museums were no longer seen as neutral shelters for the presentation of art, but were recognized as embodiments of public history and national identity; as such, museums were criticized by activists for being disconnected from the everyday experiences of the French people. The book examines how artists, curators, and critics struggled to respond to the protests in the years that followed, seeking ways to make art and museums relevant to, and representative of, the broader population. In doing so, the text highlights issues relevant to the politics of the public display of art that have been central to artistic representation.
Book Reviews:
Steven Harris, Oxford Art Journal, 31, no. 2 (2008): 304-308.
Kirrily Freeman, H-France Review, 7, no. 58 (2007): 1-5.
Natalie Adamson, Art Book, 14, no. 2 (2007): 14-15.
Jeffrey Abt, Museum and Society, 4, no. 2 (2006): 113-115.
Co-Edited Journal Issue
Future Varda, thematic issue, Camera Obscura, no. 106 (May 2021). Coedited with Homay King.
Summary: In the wake of Agnès Varda’s death in March 2019, Future Varda offers a reflection on the living issues her work illuminates. Varda was engaged until the last with the representation of women in the film industry and utilized an inventive range of media. This journal issue brings together Varda scholars of different generations and from different fields, analyzing under-acknowledged aspects of her work and opening avenues for the future.
Select Articles and Book Chapters
"L'une chante, l'autre pas: un film musicale féministe," in Viva Varda!, ed. by Florence Tissot (Paris: Cinémathèque Française, 2023): 172-183.
“Agnès Varda and Le Collectif 50/50 en 2020: Power and Protest at the Cannes Film Festival,” Camera Obscura no. 106 (May 2021): 127-153.
“Agnès Varda: Photography and Early Creative Process,” Camera Obscura no. 106 (May 2021): 215-229.
“Future Varda,” co-authored with Homay King; introduction to special issue of Camera Obscura no. 106 (May 2021): 1-7.
“Pleasure, Pain, and Subversion: Agnès Varda’s L’Opéra Mouffe,” in Plaisirs de Femmes ed. by Carrie Tarr, Maggie Allison, and Elliot Evans (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019): 37-54.
“Agnès Varda and Ydessa: Engaging Personal and Cultural Histories,” in On Women’s Films: Across Worlds and Generations, ed. by Ivone Margulies and Jeremi Szaniawski (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019): 147-161.
“Confronting Contradictions: Genre Subversion and Feminist Politics in Agnès Varda’s One Sings, The Other Doesn’t,” Modern and Contemporary France, 17, no. 3 (2009): 249-265.
“Annette Messager’s Images of the Everyday: The Feminist Recasting of ’68,” book chapter excerpt reprinted in The Everyday, ed. Stephen Johnstone (MIT: 2008): 164-169.
“Unhappily Ever After: Visual Irony and Feminist Strategy in Agnès Varda’s Le bonheur,” Studies in French Cinema, 8, no. 3 (2008): 189-209.
“Boltanski's Display at the Documenta 5: Personal or Cultural Memory?” in Orientations: Space/Time/Image/Word, ed. by Claus Clüver, Véronique Plesch, and Leo Hoek (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005): 125-139.
“Christian Boltanski's Memory Images: Remaking French Museums in the Aftermath of '68,” Oxford Art Journal, 27, no. 2 (2004): 219-238.
“Colonial Collecting: Women and Algerian cartes postales,” Parallax, 4, no. 2 (1998): 145–157.
Reprinted as:
“Colonial Collecting: French Women and Algerian cartes postales,” Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, ed. by David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson (Univ. Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2010).
“Colonial Collecting: French Women and Algerian cartes postales,” Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place, ed. by Gary Sampson and Eleanor Hight (New York: Routledge, 2002, reprinted in 2004): 159-171.
Museum Collection Essays and Catalogue Entries
“Christian Boltanski’s Padre Mariano,” Kemper Museum of Art, January 2009. https://www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/research/artwork-essays/boltanski…
“Jean Le Gac: La Boîte de Couleurs,” Critique d'art, no. 6 (Fall 1995).
Exhibitions Curated and Co-curated
Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World.
Rochester Museum and Science Center, November 2020-May 2021.
https://rmsc.org/changemakers/ As a Community Curator, conducted original research, developed content, and wrote text for exhibition. Supervised student projects, including: https://rmsc.org/changemakers/map-of-change/
Agnès Varda: (Self)-Portraits. Facts and Fiction.
Dryden Theatre, George Eastman Museum (GEM), January-February 2016.
Co-curated with Jurij Meden.
Retrospective of ten films, featuring celebrated works and historical avant-garde cinema.
Series received support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York.
Featured “Repertory Pick” by The Criterion Collection.
Kate Gleason, Visionary
Exhibition at the Wallace Center, RIT, and five temporary exhibitions across campus, Fall 2015.
Co-curated with Museum Studies Core Faculty; co-designed exhibition with Dr. Tina Lent.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Renewal in Rochester: Narratives of Progress and Poverty.
Exhibition at the RIT Museum, Spring-Fall 2015. Co-curated with RIT Museum Studies Faculty.
Co-researched, designed, and installed exhibition covering 100 years of Rochester history, drawing together objects from RIT collections and regional archives.
Made in France: Art from 1945 to the Present.
Exhibition at the Washington University Museum of Art, 2003.
Curated exhibition of forty works of art, drawn from major public and private collections.
Organized in conjunction with seminar; supervised undergraduate and graduate students’ research projects, exhibition tours, and presentation of research in exhibition guide.
Beyond the Photographic Frame.
Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Photography, 1999.
Curated exhibit of photographic work, including double-exposures and photo-collages. Authored all interpretative labels and wall text.