Education: BA, College of Wooster, Art History, 2008; MA, Brandeis University, Cultural Production, 2010.
Bio: Chris Patrello is a fourth-year PhD student in the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester.
His primary research interests focus on issues of materiality and exchange along the Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States during the nineteenth century. He seeks to explore the ways in which indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast (and North America, more generally) navigated the complex terrain of colonial expansion through the incorporation of new material goods, ideas, and trade networks into local systems of prestige and authority.
In addition to his interest in material culture studies and patterns of exchange, Chris is currently developing methods for including spirit beings and the mythic spaces they occupy into maps that chart the trajectory of objects of exchange as they travel through space and time. Using GIS and 3D-rendering software, he hopes to expand the spatial and cosmological dimensions of a given object’s “social life.”
Chris is currently a research assistant for the Claude Bragdon Project, an experiential recreation of the New York Central Railroad Station designed by Claude Bragdon. Professors Joan Saab (Art and Art History) and Joan Rubin (History) are the Principal Investigators for the project.
Research Reports
Recreating Claude Bragdon’s New York Central Railroad Station
By Chris Patrello
There used to be a beautiful train station in Rochester, New York. The Rochester train station and Greyhound Bus stop sit at the corner of Central and Joseph Avenues, just north of Rochester’s infamous “inner loop”… more »
Lab-based Learning in the Humanities: A Reflection
By Chris Patrello
DMS 103: Essential Digital Media Toolkit is a project-based course in which students are introduced to an array of softwares and technologies that are indispensable to digital humanities research. more »