PhD, MA (Columbia)

BA (UBC)

Dr. Jillian Lerner specializes in nineteenth-century visual culture, with an emphasis on print, early photography, and commercial visual attractions. She studied art history at Columbia University, completing her PhD in 2006 under the direction of Jonathan Crary and Anne Higonnet.

Dr. Lerner’s research has been published in Grey Room, History of Photography, and Oxford Art Journal. Her first book, Graphic Culture: Illustration and Artistic Enterprise in Paris, 1830–1848, is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press (2018). She is currently working on a second book, Portrait, Performance, and Self-Promotion in Early French Photography, under contract from Bloomsbury Academic. Dr. Lerner is also the author of an original graphic novel, The Peerless Prodigies of P.T. Barnum, which creatively explores media history in 1850s New York.

Read Dr. Lerner’s recent article, “Nadar’s Signatures: Caricature, Self-Portrait, Publicity,” in History of Photography 41.2 (2017): http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/gupg4rXRxKxHCxKQ2eiW/full