Karal Ann Marling

Professor

Office: 352 Heller Hall

Office Hours - Spring 2008

Wed: 8:30-10:00
and by appointment

Phone: (612) 624-5595
Fax: (612) 626-8679

Karal Ann Marling received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College in History of Art and American History in 1971. Since 1977 she has been teaching at the University of Minnesota, where she is a professor in both Art History and American Studies. A well-known specialist in American culture, she has had visiting appointments in Carleton College, Buffalo Bill Center, Cornell University, Harvard University, Catholic University of Lublin, and Moscow State University. Some of her awards include: Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Fellow of the Society for the Humanities, Robert Smith Award from Society of the Decorative Arts, Minnesota Book Award, Minnesota Humanities Commission Award, International Association of Art Critics Exhibition Award, Luce Foundation Fellow. She has been Phi Beta Kappa Professor in 2000-2001.

Her books Wall-to-Wall America: A Cultural History of Post-Office Murals the Great Depression (University of Minnesota Press, 1982, 2000); George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986 (Harvard University Press, 1988); and As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Harvard University Press, 1994, 1996), all have been named New York Times books of the year. Other recent publications include Looking North: Royal Canadian Mounted Police Illustrations – The Potlatch Collection. Afton Historical Society Press, May 2003, Debutante. University of Kansas Press, March 2004, The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol Along the American Highway (University of Minnesota Press, 1984, 2000); Graceland: Going Home with Elvis (Harvard University Press, 1996. Greek edition 1997); Building Disney’s Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance (Flammarion, 1997); Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday (Harvard University Press, 1998); and Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland (Minneapolis: Arts Midwest, 2000).

She has also written numerous contributions to New York Times, Sunday Arts & Leisure, and Chronicle of Higher Education. Some of her articles include “Early Sunday Morning,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art, 2, #3 (Fall 1988): 22-53; “Autoeroticism: America’s Love Affair with the Automobile in the Television Age,” Design Quarterly, 146 (1989): 4-19; “Disneyland, 1955: Just Take the Santa Ana Freeway to the American Dream,” American Art, 5 (Winter/Spring 1991): 13-30; “Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book: The Aesthetics of American Food in the 1950s,” Prospects, 17 (1992): 79:103; and “Elvis Presley’s Graceland, or the Aesthetic of Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven,” American Art, 7 (Fall 1993): 72-105, for which she won the 1994 Smith Prize of the Decorative Arts Society. She has also worked on recent catalog essays for Vital Forms (2001-2), The World Between (2002), Prairie Printmakers (2002), Norman Rockwell (2001), etc.

Site last modified on January 16, 2008

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