Emma Jacobs, a PhD candidate in the History of Art, always knew she wanted to pursue her graduate studies at Penn.
Pioneering Support
The world’s first graduate queer art history fellowship will advance study and research in underrepresented fields
Spring/Summer 2023
Her interest grew once she learned that Jonathan Katz (pictured at top), a trailblazing curator and one of the leading scholars in her field, queer art history, was on the faculty. That made Penn the perfect fit for Emma, who plans to pursue curatorial work after completing her doctorate.
Emma’s acceptance to Penn’s art history program came with a double dose of good news: She had been awarded the James D. McDonough Fellowship in Queer Art History, which will provide full support (tuition and a stipend) for the first five years of her doctoral studies.
Eduardo Carrera, Emma Jacobs, and Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert (pictured from left) are the inaugural McDonough Fellows, studying the history of art with a concentration in queer art history.
Funded by a $3 million donation from the Alphawood Foundation Chicago, the McDonough Fellowship is the world’s first graduate fellowship in queer art history. Emma is one of three inaugural recipients of the fellowship, which allows graduate students in the History of Art to concentrate on queer art history.
Emma is deeply grateful for the fellowship, which is making her graduate studies possible.
No other institution offers a dedicated funding stream for people in queer art history. I’m excited to be one of the first fellows and to help pioneer this new program.”Emma Jacobs, PhD candidate, History of Art
With an interest in the intersections of feminism and queer theory with art history, Emma plans to use her fellowship to research American lesbian artists from the 1970s through the present, the overlap of art and film, and the interactions between abstraction and visibility, representation, and identity politics.
She will also work together with the two other McDonough Fellows to organize a conference at Penn on queer art history, which will be presented under the banner of the McDonough Fellowship.
The impact of the McDonough Fellowship will extend beyond Emma, the other two inaugural fellows, and even Penn. “This first-of-its-kind fellowship will open doors for scholars at other institutions so queer art history will not be as marginalized as it is now,” Emma explains. “It will allow scholars that come after us to be valued and supported.”
