Kathryn R. Barush

Kathryn R. Barush received a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2011 and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In addition to supporting major CASVA projects and publications under the direction of Therese O’Malley, Barush is undertaking independent research on the visual and material cultures of religious pilgrimage with the institutional support of CASVA and the National Gallery. Her dissertation, which she is currently preparing for publication, examined the intersections of the concept of pilgrimage and the visual imagination in the context of early-to-mid nineteenth-century Britain. The study offered a detailed perspective on the conjunction of content, form, meaning, and process for artists and theorists, as notions of the transfer of ‘spirit’ from sacred space to represented space re-emerged as a key aspect of the theological and artistic discourse of the period. By tracing a common enterprise and conceptual framework - that of spiritual journey – across a variety of systems of religious belief, Barush’s work contributes to the study of the cultural and religious history of Britain and presents a historiographical critique of both secularist and denominational assumptions in literary criticism, cultural anthropology and art historical studies of the period. Barush has worked as a curatorial assistant at the Yale University Center for British Art and interned at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Her research has benefitted from the support of a Thomas J. Watson 12-month research fellowship and 3-year Leverhulme Studentship.