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 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 that prioritize art-historical methodologies that frame art from a Western European perspective and that challenge traditional center-periphery dichotomies. His research examines Habsburg-born artists and their roles in the creation of national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on Critical Theory, Jewish Studies, and the History of Graphic Design, Julian aims to understand the roles identity plays in the formation of collective nationalist consciousness. His research has been published in the Belvedere Research Journal and The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History, and will be included in an upcoming volume titled Crossing Borders on the internationalism of Central European women artists and designers. 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. Internationally, his work has been supported by affiliations with the Mucha Foundation, Masaryk University's Centre for Modern Art & Theory, and Jagiellonian University's Institute of Art History. He is the first dual-degree student to graduate from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019, earning 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, in which he examines the Jewish mysticism inherent in the history of critical theory and art history, and seeks to tease these out through textual analysis.
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, 3(1), 79–97.
“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.
“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