Dr. Erika Doss

Dr. Erika Doss is a noted historian of American art and culture who primarily studies American art history, popular culture and public culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her wide-ranging interests in American art are reflected in numerous publications and public lectures, which typically address the complexities of modern and contemporary American visual and material cultures. 

In addition to her art research, Doss said she has spent much of her academic career engaging in public culture debates. 

Doss is a faculty member in the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology and researches and writes under the auspices of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. 

One aspect of Doss’ work is her focus on innovation, which she said feeds her interest in the digital humanities, a field at the intersection of computer technology and the humanities. A recent project she collaborated on was Memorial Mapping, a venture dedicated to geographically locating memorials around the world to learn about historical memory in an increasingly transnational world. Her 2017 project focused on 9/11 memorials. 

“The digital humanities is a really exciting way to access so much more information,” she said. “In addition, I am pursuing new ways to handle conservation and preservation of art, as well as issues like copyright and property rights.” 

Doss is co-editor of the “Culture America” series at the University Press of Kansas and has served on the editorial boards of American Quarterly and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s American Art. She is currently on the editorial boards for Memory Studies, Material Religion and Public Art Dialogue. She has written several books on such diverse topics as American artists and religion, Elvis Presley culture, public art and cultural democracy, and the politics of modernism. She also has written hundreds of book chapters and scholarly articles and essays. 

A recipient of several Fulbright awards, Doss has held numerous fellowships, including at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian, the Stanford Humanities Center and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center. In 2017 she was named to the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Society of Fellows. 

Doss joined The University of Texas at Dallas in 2023. She previously was a professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she was on the faculty for 16 years, including eight as department chair. Prior to that she spent 21 years at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Department of Art and Art History, including as associate department chair. Beginning in 1991, she also was director of the university’s American studies program. 

Doss graduated from Ripon College in Wisconsin with a bachelor’s degree in art and art history. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from the University of Minnesota. After stints as a visiting assistant professor at Carleton College in Minnesota and at the University of Oregon, she was an assistant professor of art at Cleveland State University before joining CU Boulder.