Emily Morgan PhD

Associate Professor, Art and Visual Culture (Contemporary Art History)
Director of Graduate Education, Art and Visual Culture

Education

PhD, Art History, University of Arizona, 2012
MA, Art History, University of Arizona, 2006
BA, English, Tufts University, 2000
BFA, Studio Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2000

Research Interests

History of photography; photography of industry; circulation and distribution of photographic imagery; animal studies.

Emily Kathryn Morgan is Associate Professor of Art History at Iowa State University. She received her Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the history of photography, addressing how photographic meaning shifts as images are circulated and redistributed by various means including publication and appropriation. Previous research projects have focused on the appropriation of pornographic imagery in American modernist photography; and on photographically-illustrated accounts of poverty and street culture in nineteenth-century Britain. Her current research project considers the visual cultures of industrial-scale animal slaughter and meat production in the United States.

Dr. Morgan is the author of Street Life in London: Context and Commentary (MuseumsEtc. 2014), and she has published articles in Art Journal, History of Photography, and Food and History, among others. Her book Imaging Animal Industry: American Meatpacking in Photography and Visual Culture is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press.

Current Projects

Selected scholarship:

Book: Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade, forthcoming from University of Iowa Press.

Article: Bellet, Camille, and Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “Breed(ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values in Industrial Farming.” Animal Studies Journal 11:1 (2022): 200-255. Published online at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol11/iss1/10 .

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “’Those Truly Augean Stables’: International Visions of Chicago’s Packingtown.” Food and History 16:2 (2019): 107-134.

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “Harry Callahan’s Pornographic Appropriations.” Art Journal 77:3 (Fall 2018): 92-112.  DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2018.1530013

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “Waterloo Packer: Selling Slaughter.”  History of Photography 42:2 (May 2018), 128-145.  DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2018.1500786

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  "Striking Images: Photographs of Iowa Packinghouse Labor Conflict, 1948-1960.” Annals of Iowa 77:2 (Spring 2018): 151-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.12500

Book chapter: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “’True Types of the London Poor’: Street Life in London’s Transitional Typology,” in Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary: Local Practices and Global Contexts, eds. Lynda Klich and Tara Zanardi.  New York: Routledge, 2018: 121-134.

Invited presentation: “Photographing Industrial Slaughter in Chicago’s Packingtown,” American Meat Science Association Webinar Series, May 24, 2022. Recording available at https://meatscience.org/publications-resources/webinars/webinar/photographing-industrial-slaughter-in-chicago's-packingtown

Invited presentation: “Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade,” Visual Studies Research Institute, University of Southern California. Part of the VSRI lecture series "Selling the Story: Commercial Pictures and Visual Persuasion,” co-sponsored by VSRI and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dec. 5, 2019.

Conference presentation: “Rendering Rendering: Photographing Animal Extraction,” College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Photography Network sponsored session, New York, NY, Feb. 15, 2023.

Conference presentation: “’You are Walking Through Blood Now’: Routine and Rupture in the Packinghouse,” British Animal Studies Network (BASN), Virtual conference, April 16, 2021.

Conference presentation: “’The Hog-Squeal of the Universe’: Photographing Industrial Slaughter," College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Feb. 11, 2021.

Current Scholarship

• Bellet, Camille, and Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “Breed(ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values in Industrial Farming.” Animal Studies Journal 11:1 (2022): 200-255., 06/16/2022

  Published online at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol11/iss1/10 . DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.14453/asj.v11i1.9 .

• Invited talk: “Photographing Industrial Slaughter in Chicago’s Packingtown,” American Meat Science Association Webinar Series, May 24., 05/24/2022

  Recording available at https://meatscience.org/publications-resources/webinars/webinar/photographing-industrial-slaughter-in-chicago's-packingtown

• “’You are Walking Through Blood Now’: Routine and Rupture in the Packinghouse”, 04/16/2021

  Presented at “Violence,” virtual meeting of the British Animal Studies Network (BASN)

• “’The Hog-Squeal of the Universe’: Photographing Industrial Slaughter", 02/11/2021

  Presented at the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference

• “Selling Meat to Mrs. Consumer in Midcentury America”, 10/23/2020

  Feminist Fridays Lecture Series, Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Studies, Iowa State University

• Publication Subvention Grant, Office of the Vice President for Research, Iowa State University., 09/01/2020

  Funding to offset costs related to publication of my book, Imaging Animal Industry.

• “Picturing Packing: Commercial Visions of the American Meat Trade”, 01/24/2020

  Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series, Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, Iowa State University

• Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grant, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University., 01/06/2020

  Funds awarded for travel to Durham, NC, for study at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “’Those Truly Augean Stables’: International Visions of Chicago’s Packingtown.” Food and History 16:2 (issue date 2018, published 2019): 107-134., 12/10/2019
• “Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade”, 12/05/2019

  Visual Studies Research Institute, University of Southern California. Part of the VSRI lecture series "Selling the Story: Commercial Pictures and Visual Persuasion,” co-sponsored by VSRI and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

• 2019 Dorothy Schwieder Prize, Midwestern History Association (MHA), awarded for my article “’Those Truly Augean Stables’: International Visions of Chicago’s Packingtown.”, 12/01/2019

  The Dorothy Schwieder Prize is awarded annually to the best scholarly article on Midwestern history. http://www.midwesternhistory.com/dorothy-schwieder-prize

• “Mastering Animal Bodies: Perspective as an Organizing Principle in Packinghouse Photographs”, 06/28/2019

  Presented at the Creaturely Ethics, Poetics, and Animal Studies conference stream, 11th Critical Management Studies Conference, Milton Keynes, UK

• Polster Teaching Award, College of Design, Iowa State University, 04/12/2019

  “To recognize and support the significance of teaching in the College of Design and to acknowledge exceptional teaching performance of a College of Design faculty member early in his/her professional career”

• "Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade," video at https://vimeo.com/album/5881906/video/327783659, 03/28/2019

  Lightning Talk, Iowa State University Research Day 2019, Ames, IA

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “’True Types of the London Poor’: Street Life in London’s Transitional Typology,” in Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary: Local Practices and , 12/10/2018
• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “Harry Callahan’s Pornographic Appropriations.” Art Journal 77:3 (Fall 2018): 92-112., 11/08/2018

  Published online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2018.1530013

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “Waterloo Packer: Selling Slaughter.” History of Photography 42:2 (May 2018), 128-145., 09/06/2018

  Published online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2018.1500786

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. "Striking Images: Photographs of Iowa Packinghouse Labor Conflict, 1948-1960.” Annals of Iowa 77:2 (Spring 2018): 151-189., 03/01/2018

  Publishe online at doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.12500

• Organizer and Chair, CAA panel "Histories of Fake News," Los Angeles, CA, 02/24/2018

  Session of the College Art Association Conference, Los Angeles, CA

• Organizer and Chair, SECAC panel "Beastly Spirits and Spirited Beasts", 10/26/2017

  Panel chair, SECAC Conference, Columbus, OH

• “Photography and the Rise of a Global Trade in Meat,” presented at European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art, Antwerp, Belgium, 06/09/2017

  Presented at “Food, Glorious Food,” Annual Conference of the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA), Antwerp, Belgium

• Iowa State University Faculty Foreign Travel Grant, 05/01/2017

  Funds awarded for travel to Annual Conference of the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA), Antwerp, Belgium

• Grants to Scholars, Friends of the Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 04/15/2017

  Funds awarded for travel to Madison, WI, for study of archival material related to the American meat-packing industry

• "Waterloo Packer: Sanitizing Slaughter," presented at SECAC, 10/20/2016

  Presented at The World in the Frame: Photography’s Inclusions and Exclusions, session of SECAC, Roanoke, VA

• Research Grant, Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, Iowa State University, 04/15/2016

  Funds awarded for travel to Chicago, IL, for study of archival material related to the American meat-packing industry

• "Travels in the Sanitary Landscape: St. Louis and Chicago, 1904," presented at the College Art Association Annual Conference, 02/03/2016

  Presented at Something in the Dirt: Discourses of Hygiene, Health, and Progress in the North American Landscape, session of the College Art Association Conference, Washington, D.C.

• Research Grant for Authors, State Historical Society of Iowa, 04/01/2015

  Funds awarded for travel to sites throughout Iowa, for study of archival material related to the Iowa meat-packing industry

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. Street Life in London: Context and Commentary. Edinburgh / Boston: MuseumsEtc., 09/01/2014

  The book focuses on an 1877-78 photographically-illustrated publication by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, Street Life in London.  The book addresses the evolution of street photography from static typological imagery to more fluid, documentary-style images. 

• Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “Preface,” Street Life in London, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith. Rpt. Edinburgh / Boston: MuseumsEtc., 09/01/2014