Department of Interdisciplinary Studies

Dr. Lorraine Affourtit is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Appalachian State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the department of History of Art & Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities at San Francisco State University, and a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dr. Affourtit specializes in the contemporary visual culture of social movements in the Americas with a special focus on Latin America. Other teaching and research interests include visual semiotics, art activism, feminist movements, indigeneity, democracy studies, and decolonization. Her research has been published in Semiotics, the Journal of Labor Studies, and Third Text and received support from a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, a Visiting Fellowship from the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and a Graduate Student Research Fellowship in Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy from the Blum Center for Global Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development. Currently, Dr. Affourtit is working on her first book manuscript, The Visual Politics of Decolonial Democracy in the Oaxaca Commune.