Academics Felicity Ratté - Art History

Contact Felicity Ratté

Felicity Ratté teaches an assortment of western art history courses that extend from antiquity to modern times. Although specializing in 13th and 14th century Italian paintings, over the course of her time at Marlboro she has developed an interest in Southeast Asian art and architecture. Felicity is continuously striving to make her art history offerings globally inclusive. "I have begun to think of my discipline in a much more cross-disciplinary way," she says. She served as dean of faculty from 2005 to 2010.

Teaching Philosophy

"I think about the future curriculum in art history as serving two related but distinct purposes," says Felicity. Her first objective is to impart to her students an understanding of the methodologies and issues that surround the discipline. The second is to give her students "a sense of  the power of visual images for their lives and for history." By providing "a whole array of courses that deal with the question of how images function in society at different historical moments," Felicity endeavors to meet these two distinct, yet correlated aims.

Student Plans and Collaborations

• An examination of representations of gender and race in U.S. visual culture, with a focus on ideological and political implications thereof. Laura Martin '03, American studies & visual arts.
• An investigation of representation and the creation of content through different styles of modern and contemporary art. Marc Pilaro '04, photography & art history.

Scholarly Activities

Felicity is the author of the book Picturing The City in Medieval Italian Painting (McFarland Press: 2006) and has published articles in Gesta, the journal of the International Center of Medieval Art. She contributed an article to Potash Hill about her research on public art found on trucks in Calcutta, India.

Selected Conference Papers

• "The city as history: Images of Florence and her rivals in the illustrated villani," Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, April 2009.
• "Cult images and ritual practice in the illustrated villani," International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2009.

B.A., Tufts University, 1985; M.A., New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1988; Ph.D., New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1995. Marlboro College, 1997 -