Elizabeth Emrich-Rougé is an art historian, art educator and museum professional. Her research addresses the materiality, circulation and aesthetic qualities of transnational leftist material in the Interwar period, with a particular focus on popular publications and film produced in Republican-era China. Building on her doctoral scholarship, which expanded the historiography of the modern Chinese woodblock print movement, her current research uses digital humanities and art historical methods to connect the output of Chinese artists and writers with work created around the globe in the first half of the twentieth century. Her book project is titled Paper Trails: Mapping Transnational Socialist Aesthetics in China, 1931-1945.
Concurrent to her dissertation research, Elizabeth also worked as the general Curatorial Assistant (2005-2013) and the Curatorial Assistant for Asian Art (2017-2018) at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art. Her most recent curatorial projects include re-installations of the Museum’s permanent collection galleries of Chinese and Southeast Asian art between 2017 and 2018, and the co-organization with Dr. Yuhua Ding, also in 2018, of the exhibition ‘Debating Art: Chinese Intellectuals at the Crossroads’.
She holds a MA (2014) from Cornell University, a MA (2005) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a BA (2004) from Cornell University. Her most recent article, ‘The Nude Male Form in Chen Yanqiao’s Woodblock Prints and Cartoons, 1934-1935’, was published in the October 2021 issue of The Burlington Magazine.
