As a historian and critic, Paul Galvez (BA, Harvard, PhD, Columbia 2008) perennially asks himself what makes possible in a given historical period that strange thing known as the work of art. Focusing on the modern period, especially from 1848 to the 1970s, Dr. Galvez's research interests include Gustave Courbet, landscape, the relationship between drawing and painting in the nineteenth-century, the Russian avant-garde, postwar European art, and contemporary aesthetic practices. Theories of materialism in the visual arts and the poetics of matter also intrigue him. Dr. Galvez has taught at Ohio State University and Hunter College and his publications include articles in October, Cahiers d'art moderne, and Artforum.