Alicia is a doctoral candidate studying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art and material culture with Professor Sarah Betzer. Her dissertation, “The Matter of Sculpture: Étienne-Maurice Falconet, Marble, Porcelain, and Sugar in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” poses the Academic sculptor as a nexus between Enlightenment aesthetic theory and the mass-production of sculpture during the burgeoning consumer culture of the 1760s. Her research aims to explore the intersections between fine arts and decorative arts, sculpture’s role in a broadening global economy, and the relationship between marble and ephemeral forms of artistic production.

Alicia hopes her foray into the Digital Humanities will give her the tools to study issues of ephemerality and temporality (melting sugar sculpture!).