Friday, November 13, 2026 at 9:30 AM
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Across art and visual culture, bodies have served as both the objects upon which power is exercised and the means through which its effects become visible, imaginable, and contested. The 61st Annual UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium: Bodies Under Duress invites scholars to consider how visual and material practices register the forces exerted upon bodies, while also asking not only what happens to bodies under violence, but how violence is made possible, legitimized, enacted, and remembered or forgotten. The 3:30pm keynote lecture will be delivered by **Meredith Gamer**, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, her research explores the intersections of visual culture, violence, punishment, and power. Her recent book, *City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London* (2026), examines the relationship between art and public execution.