This post is part of our Behind the Scenes blog series.
One of the most beautiful aspects of Project Vox is the community it has generated, made up not only of current students, faculty, staff, and collaborators but also of alums! It was my privilege to join Project Vox first as a volunteer in 2020 and then to progress into a Research Lead and Instructor. Though I have since completed my PhD degree and am now officially a Project Vox alum, the wonderful camaraderie and opportunities to collaborate with my colleagues live on!
Lina Davy and I did not overlap as official Project Vox collaborators, but fortunately, Andrew Janiak thoughtfully introduced us anyway. When Lina came to the US for a two-week visit in Spring 2024, we discovered that I would soon be traveling to her city, Lyon, France for the 2024 World Congress of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art. Lina and I met up in France during the summer and traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, with other new friends from the conference. I wasn’t the only one who had the pleasure of visiting Lina in France; she and Project Vox’s Project Manager Sophia Maldonado had lived out their Swiftie dreams at a Taylor Swift concert just a few weeks earlier. I am grateful to Project Vox for enriching my PhD experience with friends across the globe.
Stateside, other collaborations among Project Vox alums continue. In October 2023, Meredith Graham, Yasemin Altun and I presented a paper at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Since then, we have been revising our paper for publication in a proposed edited volume. This has given the three of us a great reason to reconnect over Zoom since leaving Duke’s campus for new jobs and fellowships. My involvement with Project Vox also led to a recommendation to contribute to the exhibit The Scientific Vision of Women at Duke’s Rubenstein Library, writing an entry on Émilie du Châtelet. Even though I’m no longer involved with Project Vox on a daily basis, it’s been a pleasure to revisit familiar faces and form new connections!
Dana Hogan holds a PhD in Art History and a graduate certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies from Duke University. Prior to her doctoral work, she earned degrees at Williams College and Syracuse University in Florence. Her book project restores women artists’ rightful places in the history of cross-cultural exchange, centering representations of people from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
