Maura McCreight

Maura McCreight Art History - Photographic Archives of the Algerian War of Independence

Research Interests

  • Major: History of Photography; Minor: Art since 1900
  • Photography of the African Diaspora
  • Maghrib Studies
  • War Photography
  • Photojournalism and its archives of the 1950s and 60s
  • Fringe media
  • Circulation of images between North Africa and Europe in the 1950s-70s
  • Images of Algerian women in colonial, wartime, and post-Independence photography
  • Art methods of protest and insurgency
  • Discourses of fugitivity and Black feminist theory

Education

  • MA (Aesthetics, Philosophy), Stonybrook University
  • BA (Philosophy, Studio Art), Seattle University

Maura is a fourth year PhD student in Art History with a focus on the history of photography and the Maghrib regions. She is a lecturer in the Art Department at Brooklyn College and a member of the Photography Network, American Institute for Maghrib Studies, Le Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis, and The Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines en Algérie. Before coming to the Graduate Center, Maura worked at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle as a gallery guide and educator. She has also held positions at several art galleries in New York including Gagosian Gallery and Marlborough Gallery.

Her dissertation aims to retrace photographs of women, including combatants and political prisoners from the National Liberation Front (FLN), during the Algerian War of Independence (1954 - 62). Her dissertation advisor is Professor Antonella Maria Pelizzari.