Dore Bowen writes on modern and contemporary art, focusing on practices that probe the texture of ordinary life, test the boundaries of appropriation, and (sometimes) alter perception. She has written on the work of such artists as Yael Bartana, Dan Graham, Akram Zaatari, Bruce Nauman, Elin Hansdottir, and Lydia Ourahmane. Her research areas include the history of photography, interdisciplinary art, phenomenology, imagination, the archive, and queer feminist strategies of adaptation.
Bowen is currently completing a book on the diorama, and another on queer feminist adaptation. She also curates exhibitions, such as her 2019 reinstallation of Bruce Nauman's 1970 San Jose Installation, which culminated in Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters (with Constance M. Lewallen, University of California Press, 2019). She has received numerous grants and fellowships for her research, including from the Camargo Foundation, the Clark Art Institute, the Centre Allemand d’histoire de l’art, and San José State University.
Bowen was a professional photographer before becoming an academic. She worked with practitioners such as Richard Barnes, who first sparked her interest in archives and evidence, then earned a MA in Inter-Arts from San Francisco State University, and then a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. Her dissertation sought to broaden the definition of photography by studying the photographic output of Fluxus artists from a phenomenological perspective. She was advised by Professors Michael Ann Holly and Douglas Crimp.
Bowen is an associate professor and coordinator of the Art History and Visual Culture program at San José State University. Her seminar topics include the archive, contemporary craft, photography and perception, the spectacle, and art historical methods. Her undergraduate courses include the history and theory of new media, introduction to visual culture, the art of the 1960s and 70s, and issues of materiality in contemporary art (called "The Thing").
She can be contacted at dore.bowen@sjsu.edu.
CV is here.
Bowen is currently completing a book on the diorama, and another on queer feminist adaptation. She also curates exhibitions, such as her 2019 reinstallation of Bruce Nauman's 1970 San Jose Installation, which culminated in Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters (with Constance M. Lewallen, University of California Press, 2019). She has received numerous grants and fellowships for her research, including from the Camargo Foundation, the Clark Art Institute, the Centre Allemand d’histoire de l’art, and San José State University.
Bowen was a professional photographer before becoming an academic. She worked with practitioners such as Richard Barnes, who first sparked her interest in archives and evidence, then earned a MA in Inter-Arts from San Francisco State University, and then a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. Her dissertation sought to broaden the definition of photography by studying the photographic output of Fluxus artists from a phenomenological perspective. She was advised by Professors Michael Ann Holly and Douglas Crimp.
Bowen is an associate professor and coordinator of the Art History and Visual Culture program at San José State University. Her seminar topics include the archive, contemporary craft, photography and perception, the spectacle, and art historical methods. Her undergraduate courses include the history and theory of new media, introduction to visual culture, the art of the 1960s and 70s, and issues of materiality in contemporary art (called "The Thing").
She can be contacted at dore.bowen@sjsu.edu.
CV is here.