B.A., Amherst College
M.A., Ph.D., Rutgers University

Specialization
Modern art, design, and aesthetics

Craig Eliason's earlier research investigated the theoretical and practical relationships between the Dada and Constructivist movements in the 1920's, particularly in the career of Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg. His research now focuses on the history of typography and type design. He is developing a history of the labels used to classify printing types in the modern period.

Publications

"Theo van Doesburg: Italian Futurist?" In The Low Countries: Crossroads of Culture, ed. Ton Broos, Margriet Bruyn Lacy, and Thomas F. Shannon (Münster: Nodus, 2006), 47-56.

"Manifestoes by Mail: Postcards from the Theo van Doesburg Correspondence," Visual Resources, 17 no. 4 (December 2001): 449-458.

"De conferenties van 1922: Tristan Tzara als Van Doesburgs saboteur" [The Conferences of 1922: Tristan Tzara as Van Doesburg's Saboteur] Jong Holland (The Hague) 16 no. 2 (Spring 2000), 31-37, 66-67.
 

Exhibitions

"Face the Nation: How National Identity Shaped Modern Typeface Design, 1900-1960."
Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, July 12-September 20, 2008

"Renovation: UST Chapels After Sacrosanctum Concilium."
OEC Lobby Gallery, University of St. Thomas, October 11-31, 2003

Recent Conference Presentations

Modernist Studies Association
2007 Annual Conference, Long Beach, CA
"Eric Gill and the Humanist Sans-Serif: For and Against Modernism."

College Art Association
2007 Annual Meeting, New York, NY
"Building an Understanding of Architectural History"

Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
2005 Symposium "Collage as Cultural Practice", Iowa City, IA
"From AIZ to .JPG: Echoes of Heartfield in the Photoshopping Scene"

American Association of Netherlandic Studies
2004 Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, Minneapolis, MN
"'What is Dada?????????': Theo van Doesburg and the 1923 Dada Tour"

American Association of Netherlandic Studies
2002 Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, Ann Arbor, MI
"Theo van Doesburg, Italian Futurist?"

College Art Association
2001 Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL
"Manifestos by Mail: Postcards in the Theo van Doesburg Archive"
 

Invited Lectures

Book Arts Roundtable, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, 2008.
"The Place of Letters"

ACTC Art History Symposium, St. Paul, MN
"Promotion and Subversion: Kurt Schwitters' Avant-Garde Logo," 2003
"Equivocally Modern Letters: Gill Sans and the Origin of the Humanist Sans Serif," 2008

"Best Teaching of Our Best Professors" Workshop, University of St. Thomas, 2005
"What is Art History?"

Symposium Theo van Doesburg, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2000
(sponsored by the Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History and the University of Amsterdam)
"Spin Control: Rotation and Revolution in Van Doesburg's Art"

"Art Matters in Teaching American Studies" Conference, Pulawy, Poland, 2000
(sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, Warsaw and Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin)
"Abstract Art Since Pollock"
"Pop and the Commodity as Art"
"New Media, New Voices, New Controversies" 

Selected Fellowships and Grants

Named as an Excellence Fellow at Rutgers (1992-97), and as a graduate fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture (1997-98).

Received a grant from the Netherland-American Foundation to study in Leiden, the Netherlands (1998-99), and another from the U.S. Department of State to lecture on American art in Poland (2000).

 
Recent Graduate Seminars

After Dada
Post-Minimalism
Type Design and National Identity: An Exhibition Seminar
Word as Image in the Twentieth Century
Recall to Order: European Modernism in the Wake of World War I
Abstract Painting and the Methods of Art History
Collage from Modern to Postmodern

Website

"Art Historians' Guide to the Movies" (1997-present)
http://personal.stthomas.edu/cdeliason/ahgttm.htm

Professional Affiliations

College Art Association
Modernist Studies Association
American Printing History Association
Design Studies Forum