Emily Eliza Scott

  • Headshot of Emily Eliza Scott, PhD

  • Image reads, "Close-up of crater's surface shows how the heat of the atomic explosion destroyed a desert plant and melted sand into weird shapes of crude glass"

Emily Eliza Scott

Assistant Professor of Art History and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon

Emily Eliza Scott, PhD, is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, and former park ranger focused on contemporary art and design practices that engage pressing (political) ecological issues, often with the intent to actively transform real-world conditions. Currently a joint professor in the History of Art and Architecture & Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, she holds a PhD in contemporary art history from UCLA and was formerly a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and postdoc at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich. Her essays have appeared in Art Journal, Art Journal Open, American Art, Third Text, The Avery Review, Field, and Cultural Geographies as well as multiple edited volumes and online journals, and she is the coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Climate Change (Routledge, 2021); Viscosity: Mobilizing Materialities (UMN Architecture, 2019); and Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics (UC Press, 2015). At present, she is developing a monograph, Uneven Geology: Notes from the Field of Contemporary Art, and teaching courses on subjects including “unnatural disasters,” land and environmental art, Anthropocene debates, and architecture in the expanded field. She is also a core participant in two long-term, collaborative art projects: the Los Angeles Urban Rangers (2004-) and World of Matter (2011-). Her work has been supported by major grants/awards from Creative Capital, the College Art Association, Graham Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Luce Foundation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, Mellon Foundation, Oregon Humanities Center, Annenberg Foundation, and Switzer Foundation.

University of Southern California