Jennifer Way, PhD

I work as a tenured professor of art history at the University of North Texas located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

My current research and teaching explore conflict and humanitarianism, disability, race, and historiographies and methods in American art and craft and global contemporary art; craft, conflict, and humanitarianism; and American art and healing. These topics characterize most of my current publications projects, including those addressing craft’s deployments as a therapeutic modality in relation to wars of the 20th and 21st centuries. My courses emphasize new frameworks of interdisciplinary scholarship for primary source-based student learning. Additionally, I teach art history methodology and courses in art since about 1900, emphasizing social meanings and uses that people make of art, craft, collections, exhibitions, and histories.

Examples of my published research are available at Research Gate – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Way2/research  –

Recent activity

• “The racial ambivalence of Lewis Wickes Hine’s interracial photograph of WW1 craft therapy,” in Rebecca Gill and Wendy Wiertz, editors, Craft in Extremis: Survival and Creativity in Modern War (Manchester University Press, 2025), forthcoming
• “Cultural actors in rehabilitation: WW2 craft therapy and White, ableist, heteronormative masculinity,” in Laure Humbert, Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, and Bertrand Taithe, editors, New approaches to Medical Care, Humanitarianism and Violence during the ‘long’ Second World War, c. 1931 – 1953 (Manchester University Press, 2025), forthcoming
• “The Museum of Modern Art’s Craft-Based Occupational Therapy,” in Modernism, Art, and Therapy, edited by Tanha Sheehan and Suzanne Hudson (Yale University Press, 2024) forthcoming
• “From salvaging to merchandising—Vietnamese craft on display in America, 1956-1958,” in Verity Clarkson, Harriet Atkinson, and Sarah Lichtman (eds.) Exhibitions beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design from 1945 (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2023), 39-58
• Questions of interraciality in Lewis Wickes Hine’s photograph of WW1 craft therapy for the American Red Cross, Keynote presentation for Crafting Identities: Handicraft Programmes in Times of War, Genocide and their Aftermaths, c.1890-1950, University of Huddersfield, UK, 2022
• “Prolegomena for craft therapy during World War 1,” in Encountering Craft: Methodological Approaches from Anthropology, Art History, and Design, edited by Chandan Bose and Mira Mohsini (Routledge, 2023), 93-113
• “Subjects of industry: craft therapy, its photography, and healing American soldiers of World War 1,” in by Micky Lee, Pat Reeve, Frank Rudy Cooper (eds.) Dis/ability in media, law, and history: Embodied AND socially constructed  (Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2022), 59-75.
• “Healing WW1 Soldiers with Craft Therapy and its Photographic Narratives of Masculine Ableism and White Privilege,” Special issue: Material Cultures of Sickness, Health, and Healing, in Material Culture, The Journal of the International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture 53 no.2 (Fall 2021), 34-54

My current anthology book project, Craft and War: Makers, Objects and Armed Conflicts since 1850 (under contract with Bloomsbury) examines craft—in its fabrication, makers, users, and uses of craft objects—engaging with wars since the mid-nineteenth century in seventeen essays that invite cross-national, cultural, and chronological comparisons. My current monograph book project, Craft, wellness, and healing in contexts of war (under contract with Routledge, Research in Art History Series) examines craft deployed as a therapeutic modality and aesthetics of care for Americans coping, healing, and rehabilitating from traumas and injuries of war, including COVID-19. Research is supported by a Center for Craft Research Fund Project Grant.

Among course topics I have taught in relation to my research are: Craft and Conflict, American Art and Healing, Critical Disability Studies and Art, Art and Suffering, Visual Culture of Refugees and Healing, Politics of Belonging, Objects of Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage and Memory, Politics of Exhibitions, Artists as Citizens, Critical Histories of Craft and Art History, Craft and Conflict, and African American Art.

My book, Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and Domestication,considers how Americans appropriated a foreign art form in programs that intersected their diplomatic agendas and domestic life with South Vietnam on questions of Vietnamese belonging in the Free World from about 1955 to 1961.

I published also on the work of British (Tracy Emin, Eduardo Paolozzi), Irish (Sean Hillen and the Irelantis project), and American artists (Whitfield Lovell) active since 1945 and about art and technology with emphasis on gender. My research and teaching have been supported by Archives of American Art Kress Fellowship; Trinity College, Dublin (Fulbright); Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin; National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Institute of International Visual Arts, London; Smithsonian National American Art Museum (Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship); Lemelson Center for Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; Newberry Library, Chicago, and Center for Crafts, Asheville.

Leadership

For Panorama, Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, I serve as an editor of Digital Dialogues, a section for critical commentary concerning born-digital, virtual initiatives, and data-driven scholarship impacting American art history. For the College Art Association, I served as a member of the Council of Readers evaluating proposed sessions and papers for the annual conference. I earned a certificate for completing the Inclusion, Equity, and Community Building program at my university and subsequently I served as a member of the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Council for my college. While at the University of North Texas, I developed collaborative, interdisciplinary academic projects in partnership with members of my college and university, and with the greater Dallas Fort Worth community and organizations located outside region. Selected examples include the public interview series, Conversations: Art, Politics & North Texas; the symposium, Leadership Perspectives on Technology and Art; student teaching for the Virtual Senior Center, NYC; and Collections Cultures and Collaborations, a student-research, collections-based project collaborating with local museums and collecting organizations.

I have supervised over 60 MA art history projects, participated as a member on numerous MFA committees,  and created and taught more than 30 seminar topics and 15 upper-level art history courses. Numerous scholars and artists have visited with students in my courses. I received a university award for mentoring students in research, and a university award for teaching.  I served as PI and Co-PI for numerous external and internal grants and fellowships from the Archives of American Art, Center for Craft, Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grant, Smithsonian Terra Foundation for American Art Senior Fellowship, Design History Society, Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History, Clinton Institute for American Studies Fellowship, Humanities Texas (formerly Texas Council for the Humanities) a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Edward and Betty Marcus Digital Education Project for Texas Art Museums Grant, Fulbright Senior Fellowship Award Fellowship Council for the International Exchange for Scholars, and Yale Center for British Art.

My university leadership has promoted diversity and gender equity, graduate studies, the faculty voice in policy, and accessibility of information in the workplace environment. Working across the  university, I developed a cohort group to report on the status of women faculty. I originated the Art History Department’s 4+1 BA/MA degree track that mentors high-achieving undergraduate art history majors to begin their program of graduate art history studies during their senior year. I have overseen merit, promotion, and tenure processes for my college and program and mentored probationary faculty through tenure. I served as program coordinator for art history , chaired academic search committees, and supervised college academic, gallery, and ad hoc policy and grievance committees, among others.

Peer reviewing

I have evaluated conference proposals, grants, and manuscripts for the College Art Association, Council on Undergraduate Research, European Science Foundation, HERA– Humanities in the European Research Area’s Joint Research Programmed, Danish Council for Independent Research, Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, Bloomsbury Academic Press, and University of Washington Press, and for academic journals such as Folklore, Irish Studies Review, Feminist Media Histories, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Art Journal, and American Art Journal, and Journal of Modern Craft.

My teaching and scholarly research focus on historical and contemporary methodology, theory, and primary sources concerning the period since 1900, emphasizing social meanings and uses that people make of art, craft, design, photography, collections, exhibitions, and histories.

She is also interested in intersectional research concerning conflict, disability, race, and humanities historiographies and methodologies as well as American art and craft; global contemporary art; craft, conflict, and humanitarianism; and American art and healing. Craft and conflict, and American art and healing, are my current research, publishing, and teaching projects. Both revise existing narratives of art history and explore craft’s deployments as a therapeutic modality in relation to wars of the 20th and 21st centuries and contexts of disability and race. They reflect my interest in creating new frameworks of interdisciplinary scholarship for primary source-based research and learning. Additionally, I teach art history methodology and courses in art since about 1900, emphasizing social meanings and uses that people make of art, craft, collections, exhibitions, and histories.

Examples of my published research are available at Research Gate – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Way2/research  –

Recent activity

• “The Museum of Modern Art’s Craft-Based Occupational Therapy,” in Modernism, Art, and Therapy, edited by Tanha Sheehan and Suzanne Hudson (Yale University Press, 2024) forthcoming
• “From salvaging to merchandising—Vietnamese craft on display in America, 1956-1958,” in Verity Clarkson, Harriet Atkinson, and Sarah Lichtman (eds.) Exhibitions beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design from 1945 (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2023), 39-58
• Questions of interraciality in Lewis Wickes Hine’s photograph of WW1 craft therapy for the American Red Cross, Keynote presentation for Crafting Identities: Handicraft Programmes in Times of War, Genocide and their Aftermaths, c.1890-1950, University of Huddersfield, UK, 2022
• “Prolegomena for craft therapy during World War 1,” in Encountering Craft: Methodological Approaches from Anthropology, Art History, and Design, edited by Chandan Bose and Mira Mohsini (Routledge, 2023), 93-113
• “Subjects of industry: craft therapy, its photography, and healing American soldiers of World War 1,” in by Micky Lee, Pat Reeve, Frank Rudy Cooper (eds.) Dis/ability in media, law, and history: Embodied AND socially constructed  (Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2022), 59-75.
• 2021 Healing WW1 Soldiers with Craft Therapy and its Photographic Narratives of Masculine Ableism and White Privilege,” Special issue: Material Cultures of Sickness, Health, and Healing, in Material Culture, The Journal of the International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture 53 no.2 (Fall 2021), 34-54

My current anthology book project, Craft and War: Makers, Objects and Armed Conflicts since 1850 (under contract with Bloomsbury) examines craft—in its fabrication, makers, users, and uses of craft objects—engaging with wars since the mid-nineteenth century in seventeen essays that invite cross-national, cultural, and chronological comparisons. My current monograph book project, Craft, wellness, and healing in contexts of war (under contract with Routledge, Research in Art History Series) examines craft deployed as a therapeutic modality and aesthetics of care for Americans coping, healing, and rehabilitating from traumas and injuries of war, including COVID-19. Research is supported by a Center for Craft Research Fund Project Grant.

Among course topics I have taught in relation to my research are: Art and Healing, Critical Disability Studies and Art, Art and Suffering, Visual Culture of Refugees and Healing, Politics of Belonging, Objects of Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage and Memory, Politics of Exhibitions, Artists as Citizens, Critical Histories of Craft and Art History, Craft and Conflict, and African American Art.

My book, Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and Domestication,considers how Americans appropriated a foreign art form in programs that intersected their diplomatic agendas and domestic life with South Vietnam on questions of Vietnamese belonging in the Free World from about 1955 to 1961.

I published also on the work of British (Tracy Emin, Eduardo Paolozzi), Irish (Sean Hillen and the Irelantis project), and American artists (Whitfield Lovell) active since 1945 and about art and technology with emphasis on gender. My research and teaching have been supported by Archives of American Art Kress Fellowship; Trinity College, Dublin (Fulbright); Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin; National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Institute of International Visual Arts, London; Smithsonian National American Art Museum (Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship); Lemelson Center for Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; Newberry Library, Chicago, and Center for Crafts, Asheville.

Leadership

For Panorama, Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, I serve as an editor of Digital Dialogues, a section for critical commentary concerning born-digital, virtual initiatives, and data-driven scholarship impacting American art history. For the College Art Association, I served as a member of the Council of Readers evaluating proposed sessions and papers for the annual conference. I earned a certificate for completing the Inclusion, Equity, and Community Building program at my university and subsequently I served as a member of the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Council for my college. While at the University of North Texas, I developed collaborative, interdisciplinary academic projects in partnership with members of my college and university, and with the greater Dallas Fort Worth community and organizations located outside region. Selected examples include the public interview series, Conversations: Art, Politics & North Texas; the symposium, Leadership Perspectives on Technology and Art; student teaching for the Virtual Senior Center, NYC; and Collections Cultures and Collaborations, a student-research, collections-based project collaborating with local museums and collecting organizations.

I have supervised over 60 MA art history projects, participated as a member on numerous MFA committees,  and created and taught more than 30 seminar topics and 15 upper-level art history courses. Numerous scholars and artists have visited with students in my courses. I received a university award for mentoring students in research, and a university award for teaching.  I served as PI and Co-PI for numerous external and internal grants and fellowships from the Archives of American Art, Center for Craft, Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grant, Smithsonian Terra Foundation for American Art Senior Fellowship, Design History Society, Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History, Clinton Institute for American Studies Fellowship, Humanities Texas (formerly Texas Council for the Humanities) a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Edward and Betty Marcus Digital Education Project for Texas Art Museums Grant, Fulbright Senior Fellowship Award Fellowship Council for the International Exchange for Scholars, and Yale Center for British Art.

My university leadership has promoted diversity and gender equity, graduate studies, the faculty voice in policy, and accessibility of information in the workplace environment. Working across the  university, I developed a cohort group to report on the status of women faculty. I originated the Art History Department’s 4+1 BA/MA degree track that mentors high-achieving undergraduate art history majors to begin their program of graduate art history studies during their senior year. I have overseen merit, promotion, and tenure processes for my college and program and mentored probationary faculty through tenure. I served as program coordinator for art history , chaired academic search committees, and supervised college academic, gallery, and ad hoc policy and grievance committees, among others.

Peer reviewing

I have evaluated conference proposals, grants, and manuscripts for the College Art Association, Council on Undergraduate Research, European Science Foundation, HERA– Humanities in the European Research Area’s Joint Research Programmed, Danish Council for Independent Research, Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, Bloomsbury Academic Press, and University of Washington Press, and for academic journals such as Folklore, Irish Studies Review, Feminist Media Histories, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Art Journal, and American Art Journal, and Journal of Modern Craft.