Cooking in our Kitchens

Ananda Cohen-Aponte is associate professor of History of Art at Cornell University, where she works on the visual culture of colonial Latin America with special interest in cross-cultural exchange, historicity, identity, and anti-colonial movements. Her book “Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between: Murals of the Colonial Andes” (University of Texas Press, 2016) explores the intersections among art, politics, religion, and society in mural paintings located in colonial churches across the southern Andes. Professor Cohen-Aponte was also editor and primary author of “Pintura colonial cusqueña: el esplendor del arte en los Andes/Paintings of Colonial Cusco: Artistic Splendor in the Andes” (Haynanka Ediciones, 2015). She is currently writing a new book, entitled “Insurgent Imaginaries: The Art of Rebellion in the Late Colonial Andes,” that explores the role of the visual arts in fomenting an insurgent imaginary in late 18th-century Peru and Bolivia within a context of interethnic conflict and rebellion.

Eleanor Paynter is a postdoctoral associate in Migrations with Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Her work in critical refugee studies focuses on Africa-Europe migration and displacement and asylum in the Mediterranean through narrative and ethnographic methods.

Ella Maria Diaz is an associate professor of English and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Her book “Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History” explores the art, poetry, performance, and political activism of a vanguard Chicano/a art collective founded in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. civil rights era. For this work, Professor Diaz won the 2019 Book Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her second book, published in 2020, is a primer on Chicano artist José Montoya and Volume 12 of the UCLA and Chicano Studies Research Center’s A Ver series. Professor Diaz has published in several anthologies as well as articles in English Language Notes (ELN), ASAP/Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Chicana-Latina Studies Journal.

Jolene Rickard is associate professor of History of Art & Visual Studies and from 2008 to 2020 was the director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) at Cornell University. She is a visual historian, artist, and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and contemporary art, materiality, and ecocriticism, with an emphasis on Hodinöhsö:ni aesthetics. Professor Rickard co-curated two of the four inaugural exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian and has contributed to many journals and publications, including Art Journal; Public; and The South Atlantic Quarterly: Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law; as well as for the National Gallery of Canada. She is on the editorial board of American Art, a founding board member for the Otsego Institute for Native American Art, and an advisor to the Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture (GRASAC). Professor Rickard is from the Skarù·ręʔ / Tuscarora Nation, Hodinöhsö:ni Confederacy.

Kathryn Foster is a Ph.D. candidate in Development Sociology at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Their research focus is on population and development, specifically revolving around the demographic shifts caused by the climate crisis. That work encompasses migration surrounding climate change, environmental injustice, rural migration, and education. Foster holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology from Brigham Young University, with minors in Nonprofit Management and International Development.

Sandy Rodriguez is a Los Angeles-based artist and researcher who investigates the methods and materials of painting across cultures and histories. This year, her work is featured in five concurrent museum exhibitions at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Garden, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Denver Art Museum. Ms. Rodriguez recently received the Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Residency, Creative Capital Award, and a grant from Cornell’s Migrations initiative. Her work is represented in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; and Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; among others. Ms. Rodriguez holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and has been featured in BBC News, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Spectrum News 1, Latinos Who Lunch, and Modern Art Notes.