Molly Katharine Thrailkill is a PhD candidate in the Visual Studies program at the University of California, Irvine. Her areas of interest include the history and theory of photography, American art and visual culture, and new media (with a particular focus on digital rendering and photorealism).
Her dissertation, with the working title The Axe and the Lens: A Visual History of Trees in Industrial America, frames both photography and the deliberate felling of trees as analogous human interventions that make trees both historical and knowable. These actions are comparable too in their embodiment of both stillness and fluidity — that is, the process of rendering the tree inert both through logging as well as photographic stilling (which allows for a certain conquering of temporality exceeding the human, the intersection of geologic/arboreal and camera time) necessarily entail the transformation of the tree from living entity to commodity, from tree to lumber, but also from referent to image. At its core, this project seeks to investigate this critical entanglement of wonderment, awe, or sublimity and, ultimately, exploitation.
Education
PhD | Visual Studies
University of California, Irvine | Irvine, CA
Fall 2017 to Fall 2023 (anticipated)
MA | History of Art
The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU | New York, NY
Fall 2014 to Spring 2017
BA | Art & Art History and French
Colgate University | Hamilton, NY
Fall 2005 to Spring 2009
HONORS & AWARDS
2019 | Outstanding Art History TA Award
2017 | Master’s thesis passed with distinction
2009 | Colgate University Award for Excellence in French
2009 | Gamma Sigma Alpha National Greek Academic Honor Society
2009 | Colgate University Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2008 | Colgate University Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2007 | Colgate University Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2006 | Colgate University Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2005 | Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society for First-Year Students
Teaching
Lecturer | Art of Ancient Greece & Rome
University of California, Irvine | Irvine, CA
Summer 2020
Teaching Assistant | Art History
University of California, Irvine | Irvine, CA
Fall 2018 to Spring 2021
Teaching Assistant | Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine | Irvine, CA
Spring 2020
Teaching Assistant | History
University of California, Irvine | Irvine, CA
Fall 2019
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Business Director
artnet Auctions | New York, NY
July 2015 to August 2016
Business Manager
artnet Auctions | New York, NY
January 2013 to July 2015
Volunteer
The Morgan Library | New York, NY
April 2011 to February 2012
Photographs Cataloguer
artnet Auctions | New York, NY
February 2011 to January 2013
Intern
artnet Auctions | New York, NY
October 2010 to February 2011
Intern
Lori Bookstein Fine Art | New York, NY
October 2009 to August 2010
Intern
Blue Medium | New York, NY
October 2009 to March 2010
Intern
Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University | Hamilton, NY
Fall 2008 to Spring 2009
