How did this book project begin?

This book grew out of my doctoral research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where I explored the emergence of the figure of the artist in nineteenth-century Greece. I was captivated by the question: How does a completely new cultural practice, like “fine arts,” become socially instituted? Rather than viewing such emergence as invention, I approached it as a process of complex transnational exchanges and local adaptations. I was also intrigued by how the modern figure of the artist – the paradigm of the modern subject, a marker of individuality and subjectivity – was accommodated in a traditional society that was forming into a nation-state. In a context where nation-building and cultural identity were deeply entwined, this process revealed a rich and layered story.

Please share some highlights from your experience as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center.

My time at the Seeger Center was a formative transition, opening unexpected possibilities and helping to shape my academic path. The Center provided ideal conditions for sustained research: superb library resources and a vibrant interdisciplinary community constantly revitalized by international conferences and invited lectures. Beyond its scholarly richness, that year provided many sources of inspiration: amazing co-fellows, Monday lunches, history lectures at the Davis Center, visits to the Institute for Advanced Study, trips to New York, a concert by Maria Farantouri and Charles Lloyd, film screenings, lakeside walks, and the unforgettable glow of firefly-lit trees.

How did the research you conducted at Princeton impact your work as a whole and this book project?

I made progress on the manuscript, and I initiated a transcultural study on the teaching of art history in nineteenth-century art academies across Europe and the Americas, which I later developed in Berlin as a Humboldt Research Fellow. Princeton introduced me to two areas that proved crucial: digital humanities and the spatial and global turns in art history. For instance, learning Geographic Information System mapping techniques reshaped how I visualize historical data and became integral to the book and future projects. An encounter with network visualization tools bore fruit in later research on art biennials. This period of intellectual openness helped me reconceive the book not simply as an extension of my Ph.D., but as part of a broader comparative and theoretical framework.