Rebecca DeRoo Headshot

Rebecca DeRoo

Professor

School of Communication
College of Liberal Arts
Program Director- Visual Culture

585-475-4181
Office Location

Rebecca DeRoo

Professor

School of Communication
College of Liberal Arts
Program Director- Visual Culture

Education

BA, Bryn Mawr College; MA, Ph.D., University of Chicago

Bio

Rebecca J. DeRoo is Associate Professor and Visual Culture Program Director in the School of Communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research and teaching focus on contemporary art and visual culture, cinema, photography, museum studies, and gender studies. She is currently researching the art and activism of Mary Kelly in her third monograph (in progress) with the support of an Advance RIT Grant, RIT Seed Funding, and an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant. 

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Invited Keynote/Presentation
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour." Dryden Theatre. George Eastman Museum. Rocheser, NY. 18 Sep. 2024. Lecture.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "Illuminating Public and Domestic Labor: Mary Kelly's 1970s Feminist Art Activism." Feminist Art History Conference. American University. Washington, D.C.. 30 Sep. 2023. Conference Presentation.
(PanelChair), DeRoo, Rebecca. "Activist Exhibitions." Annual Conference. College Art Association. online, IL. 4 Mar. 2022. Conference Presentation.
Book Chapter
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "L'une chante, l'autre pas: un film musicale féministe." Viva Varda! Ed. Florence Tissot. Paris, France: Cinémathèque Française, 2023. 172-183. Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "Pleasure, Pain, and Subversion in Agnès Varda’s L’Opera Mouffe [Diary of a Pregnant Woman] (1958)." Plaisirs de Femmes: Women, Pleasure, and Transgression in French Literature and Culture. Ed. Maggie Allison, Elliot Evans, and Carrie Tarr. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2019. 37-54. Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "Agnes Varda and Ydessa: Engaging Personal and Cultural Histories." Women’s Films: Across Media and Generations. Ed. Ivone Margulies and Jeremi Szaniawski. London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2019. 147-161. Print.
External Scholarly Fellowships/National Review Committee
3/1/2022 -5/15/2022
     American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant
     Amount: $6000
Shows/Exhibits/Installations
Mullins, Corrina and (DeRoo,advisor). Additions to Map of Change display and database. n.d. Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rocheester. Exhibit.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. Community Curator of Exhibition, Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World. 20 Nov. 2020. Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester. Exhibit.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. Community Curator of Exhibition, Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World. 20 Nov. 2020. Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester. Exhibit.
Journal Paper
DeRoo, Rebecca and King, Homay. "Future Varda (introduction to journal issue)." Camera Obscura. 106 (2021): 1-7. Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca. "Agnes Varda: Photography and Early Creative Process." Camera Obscura. 106 (2021): 215-229. Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca. "Agnes Varda and Le Collectif 50/50 en 2020: Power and Protest at the Cannes Film Festival." Camera Obscura. 106 (2021): 127-153. Print.
Journal Editor
DeRoo, Rebecca and Homay King, ed. Future Varda thematic issue of Camera Obscura. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. Print.
Invited Article/Publication
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "Agnes Varda: Multimedia Artist." Sight and Sound. (2018). Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. "On Agnes Varda, Winner of 2017 Honorary Oscar Award." University of California Press Blog. (2017). Web.
National/International Competition Award Winner
DeRoo, Rebecca J. Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. Finalist, Book Award in Moving Image (Cinema and Media Studies). London, UK, 2018.
Full Length Book
DeRoo, Rebecca J. Agnes Varda between Film, Photography, and Art. print, e-book ed. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. Print.
DeRoo, Rebecca J. The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art. Paperback ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print.
Rebecca, DeRoo,. The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art. Translation in Macedonian ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print.

Currently Teaching

MUSE-224
3 Credits
Exhibitions are organized around a creative curatorial premise, a statement that articulates an idea allowing for the selection of work included in an exhibition. This course begins with an overview of exhibition history, starting with the transformation of the Louvre into the first public art museum following the French Revolution, where art history, a discipline developed in the 19th century, was enlisted to organize exhibitions. The class analyzes how art and exhibitions represent the cultural contexts in which they are created. The course examines the proliferation of types of exhibitions that accompanies modernism, up to the present, paying close attention to the curatorial premise animating the exhibitions.
MUSE-388
3 Credits
This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionally to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.
VISL-224
3 Credits
Exhibitions are organized around a creative curatorial premise, a statement that articulates an idea allowing for the selection of work included in an exhibition. This course begins with an overview of exhibition history, starting with the transformation of the Louvre into the first public art museum following the French Revolution, where art history, a discipline developed in the 19th century, was enlisted to organize exhibitions. The class analyzes how art and exhibitions represent the cultural contexts in which they are created. The course examines the proliferation of types of exhibitions that accompanies modernism, up to the present, paying close attention to the curatorial premise animating the exhibitions.
VISL-320
3 Credits
We will study cinema in the United States and abroad from the mid-20th century to contemporary screen cultures. We will consider shorts, war documentaries, biographical and autobiographical films, animation, mockumentaries, video diaries, and immersive installations. Questions we will ask include: How does cinema represent or transform social and historical events in local and global contexts? Which ethical and aesthetic responsibilities does a filmmaker have to their audience and filmed subjects? What ethical questions do the films raise for us as spectators? How do we understand the role of media technologies in the making of these films? We will investigate the structures, techniques, and ideologies that identify cinematic practices as fiction or non-fiction and consider films that challenge these representational systems, helping us examine the line between fact and fiction. Students will complete a film critique as a class assignment.
VISL-388
3 Credits
This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.
WGST-388
3 Credits
This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.

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