Biography
BA Harvard University (2008), PhD Columbia University (2016)
Research areas
I am a scholar of European visual culture, particularly in relation to resource extraction, scientific knowledge, and media technologies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My publications on this can be found in Representations, Art History, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal18 and elsewhere.
My recent publications have explored: art and infrastructure in nineteenth-century Britain (nonsite); resource extraction and German romanticism (Apollo Magazine); and race in eighteenth-century French art (journal18).
My second book, Picturing Landscape in an Age of Extraction, is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press. It argues that 'picturing landscape' was the primary means through which European artists grappled with an enormous transformation in how humans relate to the natural world, characterized by the management and extraction of “natural resources” on an unprecedented scale and within a global network. Multi-national in its scope, this book explores how European landscapes pictured the natural environment in relation to specific extractive industries such as mining and timber harvesting as well as emerging concepts about race, climate, and waste operative within the continent and its colonial networks.
My first book (Art, Science and the Body in Early Romanticism, Cambridge University Press), short-listed for the Kenshur Prize for best book in eighteenth-century studies, examines the relationship between art and the production of scientific knowledge at the dawn of the nineteenth century. It reveals some of the ways that artworks were critical actors in a larger epistemological transformation taking place at the twilight of European Enlightenment. A recent article, "Art after Self Evidence," reflects specifically on the status of race and gender in this shift.
I regularly collaborate with artists, curators, and climate scientists to explore alternative strategies for visualising environmental change in the present day. Building upon previous work with multi-media artists and museums, I am developing a collaborative project on how to visualise the continued presence of coal-powered energy for the broader public.
I was recently a Saltire Fellow at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2022) and previously held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2020). My research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Yale Center for British Art, the Royal Academy, the Association for Art History, the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, and elsewhere. From 2013-14 I was a Mellon-funded research fellow at The Museum of Modern Art, where I worked primarily on the exhibition 'Degas: A Strange New Beauty' (2016).
PhD supervision
- Lauren Robbins
- Veatriki Spengou
- Ingrid Steiner
Selected publications
-
Jean-Louis Dupain-Triel’s Carte minéralogique de France (1781)
O'Rourke, S., 2024, Journal18.Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
-
Open access
John Martin and the Art of Infrastructure
O'Rourke, S., 8 May 2024, In: Nonsite. 46Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue › peer-review
-
Progress or pollution? How British landscape painting captured the Industrial Revolution
O'Rourke, S., 21 Aug 2024, Art UK.Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
-
The Awesome Art of Caspar David Friedrich
O'Rourke, S., 10 Jun 2024, Apollo - The International Art Magazine, p. 60-67.Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
-
Review of Iris Moon and Richard Taws, eds. Time, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
O'Rourke, S., Apr 2023, In: H-France. 23, 72, p. 1-5Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
-
Open access
Art after self evidence: Fuseli, Blake, and Banks
O'Rourke, S., 25 Jul 2022, In: European Romantic Review. 33, 4, p. 497-513 17 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
-
Race: Representation in the French Colonial Empire
O'Rourke, S. (Editor) & Blair, S. (Editor), 1 Apr 2022, In: Journal18. 13Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue › peer-review
-
Serial portraits and serial selves at the end of the French Enlightenment
O'Rourke, S., 14 Sept 2022, Porträts in Serie: Reihung und Vervielfältigung als Mittel von Argumentation in Geschichte, Kunst und Literatur. Freyer, S., Niehr, K. & Schmitt-Maaß, S. (eds.). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 165-188 (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen; vol. 171).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Art, science, and the body in early romanticism
O'Rourke, S., 4 Nov 2021, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 253 p. (Cambridge studies in romanticism)Research output: Book/Report › Book
-
Open access
The sediments of history in Napoleonic France
O'Rourke, S., 25 May 2021, In: Word & Image. 37, 1, p. 6-20Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review