Lauren R. Cannady, Ph.D.

Biography

Lauren R. Cannady is a scholar of early modern European and colonial North American art, architecture, and material culture. Her research and teaching, situated at the intersections of art history, environmental history, and intellectual history, draw out the ways that early modern ideologies and cultural production continue to shape our present.

Cannady is writing a book on the ordering of the natural world in northwestern European gardens and the dissemination of early modern vernacular knowledge. Previous publications include Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks (co-edited with Jennifer Ferng and published in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series in 2021) and articles in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2020) and the “Im/Materiality in Renaissance Arts” special issue of Arts (2023), among others. Her research has been supported by fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, the Huntington Library, the Lloyd Library, and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

Before joining UHCL, Cannady was the assistant director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute and an assistant clinical professor in the University Honors Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She earned a B.A. from the University of Montevallo, an M.A. from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

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Courses (Current Academic Year)

• Ideas in Transition: Natural Histories
• Museums and the Public

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