John White is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art & Archaeology. His research focuses on early modern global exchanges and the social ‘lives’ of material culture and commodities, with an emphasis on the ocean and objects recovered from and reconstituted by shipwrecks. He received his BA from Brown University and his MSc from the University of Edinburgh, where his research focused on dance made for the camera. He subsequently did his MA studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
In tandem with his academic work, John is a dancer and a performer. He also is passionate about prison abolition and has volunteered for over three years with the New York-based organization Parole Preparation Project, which helps incarcerated people prepare for their parole hearings. Professionally, he has interned at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas and worked at artnet Auctions in New York.
Selected Publications”Sea Sculpture and/as ‘Vibrant Matter’: The Material Lives of Porcelain Objects Lost and Found at Sea,” in Objects & Organisms, ed. Ella Beaucamp, Romana Kaske, and Thomas Moser (Berlin: De Gruyter). Forthcoming 2021.
“Intimate Encounters: Screendance and Surveillance,” International Journal of Screendance 8 (2017).
“The Test of Time: Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. Series and the Materiality and Temporality of the Body,” International Review of African American Art 26, no. 2 (2016).
