Elizabeth Otto
PhD
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History
Director
Interests
European and US-American art and visual culture from the nineteenth century to the present; issues of gender, history, and theory; and the history of photography, film, and media culture
About
Elizabeth Otto joined UB’s faculty in 2004 and now serves as director of the Humanities Institute. Among her most recent projects is her co-curated exhibition, “Bauhaus and National Socialism,” in Weimar Germany (recently profiled in UB Now). She is currently working on a related book that explores continuities and breaks in the lives and works of Bauhaus members under Nazism.
Books
- Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics, MIT Press, 2019. Winner of the Northeast Popular Culture Association's Peter C. Rollins Book Prize
- Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective (with Patrick Rössler), English edition: Bloomsbury UK; German edition: Knesebeck Verlag, 2019.
- Tempo, Tempo!: The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt, Jovis Verlag/Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Museum of Design; Harvard Art Museums; and the International Center for Photography, New York, 2005.
Edited Books and Co-Authored Exhibition Catalogues
- “…ein Restchen alter Ideale”: Bauhäuslerinnen und Bauhäusler im Nationalsozialismus [A Remnant of Old Ideals”: Bauhaus members and National Socialism] (with Anke Blümm and Patrick Rössler), Wallstein, 2025.
- Bauhaus und Nationalsozialismus (with Anke Blümm and Patrick Rössler), Hirmer, 2024. [Catalogue for the exhibition Bauhaus and National Socialism.]
- Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism's Legendary Art School, (with Patrick Rössler), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.
- 4 "Bauhausmädels": Gertrud Arndt, Marianne Brandt, Margarete Heymann, Margaretha Reichardt (with Patrick Rössler, Kai-Uwe Schierz, and Miriam Krautwurst), Sandstein Verlag, 2019. Bilingual catalogue to the co-curated exhibition at the Angermuseum, Erfurt, and in Berlin at the Thuringian State Federal Representaton Building. Exhibition
- Art and Resistance in Germany (with Deborah Ascher Barnstone), Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.
- Passages of Exile (with Burcu Dogramaci), 2017, De Gruyter, 2017.
- New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s (with Vanessa Rocco), The University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Selected Recent Publications, Talks, and Conference Organization
- “Bauhaus for Children: Care Work and Art Therapy with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Edith Kramer,” Modernism, Art, Therapy. Ed. Hudson and Sheehan. Yale University Press, 2024, Open Access.
- Co-organizer of the “Bauhaus and National Socialism” conference, 2023.
- “The Missing Archive: Bauhaus Designers and the Holocaust,” talk at the Fritz Ascher Society, 2023.
- “Kommunistischer Aktivismus nach dem Bauhaus: Willi Jungmittags Arbeiterfotografie und der Wiederstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus” [Communist Activism after the Bauhaus: Willi Jungmittag’s Worker Photography and Resistance to National Socialism]. Linke Waffe Kunst: Die Kommunistische Studentenfraktion am Bauhaus (Edition Bauhaus Nr. 60). Eds. Wolfgang Thöner, Florian Strob, and Andreas Schätzke. Basel: Birkenhäuser/Bauwelt Fundamente: 2022, 233–49.
- “Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi Neoclassicism: Olympia (1938),” A Modernist Cinema: Film Art from 1914 to 1941 Ed. Klein & Moses. Oxford UP, 2021.
- “ringl + pit and the Queer Art of Failure.” October 173 (summer 2020), 37-64.
Book Covers
Selected Awards
- Gerda Henkel Stiftung Fellow, Germany, 2022–2023
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Research, inaugural Kurt and Thea Sonnenmark Memorial Fellow, Fall 2022
- Cape Cod Modern Residency, Curator, Fall 2022
- Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Getty Scholar, 2021–2022
- The Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, 2019–2020
- National Humanities Center, Frank H. Kenan Fellow, 2017–2018
- University at Buffalo Gender Institute Excellence in Mentoring Award, 2017
- Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Visiting Fellow, 2016
- The University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center, Early Career Residential Fellowship, 2010–2011
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, German Chancellor Fellowship, 2004–2005
Education
- PhD, The History of Art, Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies, The University of Michigan
- MA, Art History, Queen's University, Canada
- BA, Art History, Oberlin College