Dr. Safford is a full professor of art history, art department chair, who has also served as Chair of the Faculty. Her training was in 19th and 20th century European and American art, and she also teaches Ancient, Renaissance, Baroque, Japanese and Indian art. She received a dozen grants from NEH, Fulbright-Hays, AACU, and ASIANetwork to travel and learn in Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, France and Italy, and has taken students to Japan, France, Italy, and soon, Greece. She team taught classes with a music historian, photographer, and professors in English literature communication, political science, and classics. She won an Ohio Humanities Council Grant to create a course on American Art in Northeast Ohio museums.
Education
- Ph.D., Art History, Ohio State University, 6/87
- M.A., Theatre, Kent State University, 5/84
- M.A., Art History, Ohio State University, 6/80
- B.A., Art History; Honors College, Kent State University, 6/77
- B.F.A., Fine Arts, Kent State University, 12/76
Research Interests
- European Art: Religious iconography and dance in Italian Renaissance and Early Modern French art
- Arts of Asia: the preservation or translation of traditional culture in modern and modernizing societies
Selected Publications
- “Art at the Crossroads: Lacquer painting in French Vietnam” Transcultural Studies [S.I.] no. 1 (Aug. 2015) 126-170.
- “Cultural Heritage Preservation in Modern China: Problems, Perspectives, and Potentials,” ASIANetwork Exchange, Volume 21, No. 1 (Fall 2013) 1-13.
- “Dante in the Italian Renaissance of Art,” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Volume 13, No. 1 (2012) 97-104.
- “Japanese Gardens: All Nippon, Very Little Zen”, East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No.1, (2003).
- “Mallarme’s Influence on Degas’s Aesthetic of Dance in His Late Period,” Nineteenth Century French Studies, Vol. 21, nos. 3 & 4 (1993) 419-33.
Fun Facts
- Former dancer in university troupe, actress at Porthouse Theater, long distance runner, guitar-playing folk singer.
- Taught at Ohio Wesleyan, SFASU in Nacogdoches, Texas and Kent State before Hiram.
- Parent of three twenty-somethings.
