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Monday, April 7, 2025

Two Art History faculty receive Special Collections Coursework Development Grant

Monica Salazar is facing forward and smiling. She has long dark hair and wears a purple top.
Mónica Salazar, Ph.D., senior lecturer in Art History.
Mónica Salazar, senior lecturer, and Layla Seale, visiting assistant professor are recipients of the UNT Libraries Special Collections Coursework Development Grant for Spring 2025.
 

Mónica Salazar

Salazar teaches courses in postmodernism, theories of contemporary art, as well as the history of photography and modern and contemporary Latin American art. Her research considers questions regarding Mexico’s entrance into the globalized world order and the consequences this has for the visual arts.
Students in her upper-level undergraduate History of Photography course will study holdings in the Byrd Williams Family Photography Collection as inspiration for a creative self-portrait assignment.
 

Layla Seale

Layla Seale is facing forward and smiling. She has brown hair and wears a blue top with a white collar.
Layla Seale, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor in Art History.

Seale, whose research analyzes how medieval images of demons reveal a broad spectrum of religious and cultural ideologies and anxieties. Recently, her work on demons and labor, titled “Work is Hell: Demon Laborers in Late Medieval Art,” was published in Different Visions, a peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted to progressive art history scholarship.

Undergraduate students in her art history course, Illuminating the Middle Ages: The Art of Medieval Manuscript, will analyze UNT Special Collection’s rich collection of medieval manuscript leaves and fragments during multiple visits, and submit written responses explaining their reactions to the materiality of these objects with the option of submitting a creative assignment replicating the techniques they analyzed. During individual visits, students will also consult the robust collection of illuminated manuscript facsimiles.

Special Collections

The Special Collections department collects and preserves rare and unique materials including rare books, oral histories, university archives, historical manuscripts, maps, microfilm, photographs, art and artifacts. The collections are publicly accessible to students, faculty, staff and the general public.
 
Supported by the Toulouse Archival Research Program Endowment, the grant was established in 2019 to partner with UNT faculty to develop assignments for courses that will use collections and materials held by Special Collections Department of the UNT Libraries. Recipients of the grant are awarded $500 in research and professional development funding.