Assistant Professor, Art History
PhD, McGill University
MRes, European University Institute
BA, MA, University College London
Specialisations
Central and eastern European art and visual culture, 1500–1700
Poland-Lithuania
Transcultural Studies
Biography
Tomasz Grusiecki is assistant professor of art history (early modern) at Boise State University. He received his PhD from McGill University, Montreal and was subsequently an EMS Junior Research Fellow / FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Central European University, Budapest. He joined Boise State in 2018.
Tomasz specialises in the study of cultural interactions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the wider world, focusing on the issues of centre and periphery, cultural liminality, and perceptions of selfhood and alterity. He is currently preparing a book manuscript, tentatively titled “Transcultural Commonwealth: Visual and Material Histories of Poland-Lithuania, 1500–1700.” This study explores representations of the emerging Polish-Lithuanian political nation, as its otherwise heterogeneous Polish, Ruthenian, Lithuanian and Prussian nobilities found themselves in the midst of searching for a convincing story of their shared origins and place in the world. Tomasz’s book examines how these often self-contradictory stories were activated and legitimised by images and objects of material culture.
Tomasz is a Research Affiliate in the international project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada:Art, Materiality and Early Modern Globalisation.
Teaching
Early modern art, 1400–1800; Methods of Art History and critical theory; Art and globalisation
Recent Publications:
- “Uprooting Origins: Polish-Lithuanian Art and the Challenge of Pluralism.” In Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present, ed. Beáta Hock and Anu Allas, 25–38. New York: Routledge, 2018.
- “Foreign as Native: Baltic Amber in Florence.” World Art 7, no. 1 (2017): 3–36.
- Awarded the 2018 Emerging Scholars Publication Prize from the Historians of German, Scandinavian and Central European Art (HGSCEA)
- “Connoisseurship from Below: Art Collecting and Participatory Politics in Poland-Lithuania, 1587–1648.” Journal of the History of Collections 29, no. 2 (2017): 209–226.
- “Between Sacred and Profane: Devotional Space, the Picture Gallery, and the Ambiguous Image in Poland-Lithuania.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 64, no. 4 (2015): 521–542.
Selected links
You can learn more about Tomasz’s research and publications on www.tomaszgrusiecki.com