Rate My Professor Kirsten Strom

Strom's primary research focus is Surrealism. She authored the book Making History: Surrealism and the Invention of a Political Culture (University Press of America, 2002) and articles such as “Avant-Garde of What?: Surrealism Reconceived as Political Culture” (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2004), “Sometimes I Spit for Pleasure on My Mother’s Portrait: On the Strategic Uses of Inflammatory Rhetoric in Surrealism” (The Invention of Politics in the European Avant-Garde, 2006), and “Reinventing Art and Ethnography: Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, and Maya Deren in Haiti” (Review of International American Studies, 2009/2010). She has received multiple Scholarly Travel Grants from GVSU (2000-2009), a Research and Development Grant (2001), and scholarships including the Margaret and Robert Alexander Scholarship (1998). Strom teaches Art History courses including Survey I and II, Surrealism, Art Since 1945, Asian Art, 19th-Century Art, and Capstone. She has presented extensively at conferences like the College Art Association and Modernist Studies Association, chaired panels, and given public lectures at the Grand Rapids Art Museum and Meijer Sculpture Garden on topics such as Surrealism, modern art, and Japonisme. In addition to scholarship, she practices studio art in photography and collage, with solo exhibitions like “Anagram Project” at Calder Art Center, GVSU (2003), and recently displayed surrealism-inspired dresses at the International Society for the Study of Surrealism conference in Paris.