Lisa Bixenstine Safford, Ph.D.
Professor of Art History
B.F.A., B.A., M.A., Kent State University;
M.A., Ph.D., Ohio State University
330.569.5307
saffordlb@hiram.edu
Education | Courses | Publications | Academic Honors
Lisa Bixenstine Safford is in her twenty first year of teaching art history, and is the art department chair at Hiram College. While her training was concentrated in 19th and 20th century European and American art, she teaches Ancient, Renaissance, Baroque, Japanese and Indian art as well as courses in her area of greatest expertise. The arts of Japan and India are topics which she has most newly engaged since 1992. To create these courses she participated in seven faculty development programs sponsored by the NEH, Fulbright-Hays, AACU, and ASIANetwork that have taken her to Japan, China, Korea, and India. In 2000 she participated in an Intensive Japanese Garden Seminar offered through Kyoto University.
Dr. Safford has taken Hiram College students to Japan on two occasions, in addition to the regular travel with students she embarks on to France and Italy to learn of the art and culture there. She team teaches classes with a music historian on art and music since the Renaissance, (including a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies course) and the art and music of New Orleans. With a professor in Communications she has team-taught a course on Japanese Ideologies, Artifacts and Institutions while in Japan. In all of her art history courses, she integrates many interdisciplinary topics, including religion, literature, philosophy, science, and other arts. She has published articles and given conference papers on topics in eastern and western art.
Areas of interest: Asian art, European and American Modernism, Renaissance art.
Teaches all topics from Ancient to Modern, Japan and India.
Has taken students abroad nine times: to Italy, France, and Japan.
Education
Kent State University (Fine Art), B.F.A.
Kent State University (Art History), B.A.
Ohio State University (Art History), M.A.
Kent State University (Theatre), M.A.
Ohio State University (Art History), Ph.D.
Courses Taught
History of Western Art (click here to view a sample syllabus)
Ancient Art
Japanese Art
Art of India
Baroque Art
American Art
Contemporary Art
Italian Renaissance Art
19th Century European Art
Early Modern Art (1880-1940)
Realism (graduate course)
The Romantic Age (art and literature, team taught)
The Muses Entwined: Art and Music since the Renaissance (team taught)
What is Beauty?: Art and Music of the Renaissance (team taught, graduate course)
Japan: Ideologies, Artifacts, and Institutions (team taught, travel course)
The Human Body in Art (Freshman Colloquium)
French Art and History in Paris and Provence (travel course)
Monuments of Italian Art (travel course)
Music and Architecture of New Orleans (travel course)
Creativity and Commerce: Art and Entrepreneurship from the Pope’s Michelangelos to Post-Modernism
Selected Publications
- Book Review, The Japanese Garden: Gateway to the Human Spirit by Seiko Goto, Education About Asia (2007).
- Book Review, Culture and Customs of India by Carol E. Henderson, East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies (Vol. 4, Number 1, 2004)
- Book Review, Japanese Woodblock Printing by Rebecca Salter, Education About Asia , vol.9 no.2 (Fall, 2004).
- “Japanese Gardens: All Nippon, Very Little Zen”, East-West Connections, vol. 3 no.1 (Fall, 2003)
- “Bringing the Classroom to Art: Art History and Modern Culture in Japan” ASIANetwork Exchange, Vol. IX, No.3, Spring 2002, 19-20
- Book Review: Choreography and Narrative by Susan Foster, Nineteenth Century French Studies, (Fall, 1997)
- “Mallarme’s Influence on Degas’s Aesthetic of Dance In His Late Period,” Nineteenth Century French Studies, Vol. 21, nos. 3 & 4, (Spring, 1993) 419-33
- “The Scaffolding of Rome,” Hiram Magazine (Spring, 1990) 5-8
- “Tender Moments: The Mother and Child Paintings of Mary Cassatt,” Kaleidoscope, 18 (Wtr./Spr., 1989) 10-13
Academic Honors and Awards
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Seminar for College Teachers, “Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Medieval World: Literature, History, Art”, 2009
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for College Teachers, Korean History and Culture, Honolulu and Korea, 2004
- Fulbright-Hays Foundation, Seminar Abroad Travel Grant to India and Sri Lanka, summer 2003
- Workshop grant: Representing Excellence: the Authoritative in South and East Asian Art and Literature, Asian Studies Development Program, Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee (April 10-14).
- Workshop grant: Considering the Place of Buddhist Traditions Across Asia, Center for Asian Studies, University of Texas, Austin (March 19-20)
- Hiram College, Induction into Garfield Society, 2002
- Hiram College, Fiat Lux Research Grant, 2002
- Hiram College Summer Scholars Fellowship Grant, 2001
- Hiram College Paul E. Martin Faculty Excellence Award, 2000, 1994
- Hiram College Faculty Technology Innovator Award, 2000
- AACU Faculty and Curriculum Development, Seminar in Japan, 2000
- ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation Student-Faculty Fellows Program, summer in Japan, 2000
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for College Teachers, Indian Culture and Civilization, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1999
- ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation College in Asia Summer Institute in Japan and China, 1998
- Fulbright-Hays Foundation, ASDP Field Study in Japan, Summer, 1997
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for College Teachers, Japanese Culture and Civilization, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1995
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Seminar for College Teachers, Gothic Cathedrals in Paris and Environs, 1993
- Hiram College, Gund-Gerstacker Summer Research Award, to prepare travel course on Art of Paris, 1993
- Hiram College, Lilly Grant, to prepare course on Art of Japan, 1991
- Hiram College, Faculty Development Grant, 1991, 1989
- Stephen F. Austin State University, Faculty Research Grant, 1984
- Ohio State University, Graduate Alumni Research Award, 1984
- Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, 1980