Iain Mackay

I am a first-year PhD student at Emory University pursuing a degree in art history. My area of expertise concerns Early Modern Dutch art and theory. My proposed dissertation topic centers on Willem van Nieulandt II, a sixteenth-century playwright, art theorist, writer, philanthropist, and painter of history scenes and landscapes.

In addition to my experience with the metropolitan Netherlands, I also study global connections facilitated by the Dutch empire, which allows me to contextualize the complex web of artistic and cultural production in the Early Modern period. In addition to this broad geographic span, I am minoring in Medieval art. This grounding framework enables me to incorporate a robust framework of liturgical, devotional, and image-theory approaches to humanistic pursuits.

Both my scholarly and pedagogical philosophies are grounded in questioning the traditional canon to better reach diverse populations. The humanities need not be cloistered spaces reserved for traditional academics. By engaging various publics in art historical conversations, I hope to demystify humanistic pursuit and co-create superior teaching and learning spaces.