Nicole Archer

AltMFA Lecturer & Critic

Ph.D. History of Consciousness, with a designated emphasis in Visual Studies – University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A. Cultural History – Goldsmiths College, University of London

B.A. Art History/Gender Studies– New College of Florida. 

DR. ARCHER researches contemporary art and design, with an emphasis in textile and garment histories. She is currently completing a book-length manuscript, which considers how textiles are used to produce and maintain the limits of "legitimate" vs. "illegitimate" forms of state violence. Her teaching explores politics and aesthetics through close, intersectional examinations of style, embodiment, and desire.

Her work has been published in various journals and edited collections, including: Criticism: A Quarterly Journal for Literature and the Arts; Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture; Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (published by the New Museum + MIT Press); Where are the Tiny Revolts? (published by the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts + Sternberg Press); Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory.

Prior to joining the faculty at Montclair State University, Dr. Archer worked as an Assistant Professor and Department Chair at the San Francisco Art Institute’s History and Theory of Contemporary Art Department (2013-2018), and as a Resident Scholar in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies’ Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley (2017-2018).

Dr. Archer also currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Art Journal Open, for the College Art Association: http://artjournal.collegeart.org/