Julian Adoff
PhD Candidate: Modern Art and Design of Central Europe
Pronouns: He/Him/His
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About
Julian Adoff is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a concentration in Central and Eastern European Studies. Julian maintains deeply intertwined research and studio practices. Julian is interested in challenging modes of thought surrounding the predominance of art historical methodologies that prioritize conceptions of art from a Western European point of view and challenge traditional center-periphery dichotomies. His research investigates Habsburg-born artists and their roles within the history of national identity creation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on Critical Theory, Jewish Studies, and the History of Graphic Design, Julian aims to understand the roles of identity played in the formation of collective, nationalist consciousness. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, the Ross Edman Art History Fellowship, and the UIC Provost Graduate Research Award. He is the first dual degree student to graduate from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019, where he received an MA in Critical Studies and an MFA in Visual Studies. He received his BA in Studio Art and Visual Culture from Linfield College in May 2016. Julian’s studio practice explores the notion that research is a creative act, where he explores the Jewish mysticism inherently found within the history of critical theory and art history and tries to tease these out by searching within texts.
Selected Grants
Fulbright-Hays, Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, Fellow
Selected Publications
“Finding a Place in the (Art) World: Amrita Sher-Gil’s Cross-Continental Allegories of Art History.” Solicited by Elana Shapira and Anne-Katrin Rossbergm eds. Women’s Art of Crossing Borders: Central European Women in Modern and Contemporary Art and Design. De Gruyter. (Forthcoming 2026)
“Jewish Modernity in Multiplicity: Maurycy Gottlieb’s Dialectically-Hybrid Jewish/Polish Nationalism.” Belvedere Research Journal. (Forthcoming 2025)
“In Search of the Archaic,” A Review of Irina Shevelenko, Russian Archaism: Nationalism and the Quest for a Modernist Aesthetic, Art East/Central 4, (2024): 123-128. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.80956.
“UGLY AND OUT OF SIGHT: Reconsidering the Irrational in Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory,” in The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History, ed. Tijen Tunali and Brian Winkenweder (New York, NY: Routledge, 2025), 35–54.
Review of Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism, by Liliya Berezhnaya and Heidi Hein-Kircher. Slavic & East European Journal 64, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 562–63.
Service to Community
Chair of CAA's Students and Emerging Professionals Committee (2020-2022)
Education
MFA Visual Studies, Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2019
MA Critical Studies, Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2019
BA Studio Art, Linfield College, 2016