Clarissa Chevalier
...is an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Smith College. Chevalier’s research brings feminist science and technology studies into dialogue with environmental science, examining how imaging technologies, sensing systems, and visualization practices shape knowledge about oceans, ecosystems, and climate. Chevalier also writes about collaborations between art and science and curates exhibitions and public projects that explore the cultural and political dimensions of scientific representation.
Smith College
Assistant Professor, Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Smith College
Education
Ph.D., Art History, Theory and Criticism and the Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research. Dual affiliation to the Visual Arts Department and Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Unviersity of California San Diego (UCSD)
M.A., Art History
Savannah College of Art and Design
B.A., Cinema Arts with Minor in Art History
Columbia College Chicago
Selected Curatorial and Museum Work
Performance Lecture, Drifting with Plankton: An Interactive Performance Lecture on Ocean Art, Science, and Sensory Knowledge, In collaboration with artist Jess Holz. MIT Museum, MIT.
Curator, Embodied Pacific: Through a Porcelain Cast. Geisel Library, UCSD.
Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide
Co-Curator with Lisa Cartwright, Embodied Pacific: Seaways. The Visual Arts Gallery at SME, UCSD.
Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide
Archival Researcher, SCAD Museum of Art
Savannah College of Art and Design
Selected Publications
Clarissa Chevalier and Dante Capone. “Between Tactile and Digital: Zooplankton, Visual Science Studies, and the Automation of Oceanographic Observation.”
In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Bloomsbury Press.
Clarissa Chevalier. “Clay as Technical Medium: Claudine Arendt’s Through a Porcelain Cast.”
In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Bloomsbury Press.
Clarissa Chevalier. “The Ocean is Not a Machine: A Feminist Media Analysis of Oceanographic Models, Simulations, and Futures.”
In World Futures Review SI: Environmental Futures: Media, Literary, and Narrative Approaches
Review: “Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media by Alberlardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka.”
Clarissa Chevalier. “Agnes Denes: Ecological Art and Cultural Sustainability.”
Clarissa Chevalier. “Eco-Phenomenology and the Maintenance of Eco Art: Agnes Denes’s A Forest for Australia.”
Selected Public Speaking + Conferences
Presenting Scholar, “Crafting Plankton Data: A Feminist Materialist Reframing of Oceanographic Representations Across Art and Science.” PhD Candidate Colloquium.
Visual Arts Department, UCSD
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD
Toronto, Canada
Participating Scholar, Colby Summer Institute in the Environmental Humanities
Colby College, Maine
Presenting Scholar, “Bio-Optical Oceanography, Ocean Simulacrum, and Posthuman Feminism. FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science, and Technology.
University of Windsor, Canada
University of North Texas
Presenting Scholar, “Pulling Apart the Myth of Independent Scientific Genius with Feminism, Disability Studies, and Artistic Practice.” Society for the Social Studies of Science 2023 Conference.
Honolulu, Hawai’i
San Francisco, California
Invited Speaker, “Ceramics, New Technologies, and Posthuman Feminism.” Design@Large Series: Soft Structures in Hard Times.
Design Lab, UCSD
Savannah College of Art and Design
Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico
Evora, Portugal
Brooklyn, New York
Courses & Educational Materials Developed
FYS187: Do Microscopes Have Politics?
2025
VIS103A: Shaping Science through Design.
Educational Materials Developer, The History of Art: A Global View, 1st and 2nd editions
Smith College
UCSD
Thames & Hudson
Thames & Hudson
Selected Awards
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Scholar Award
UCSD
Ships Oceanographic Research Fund, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
UCSD
Russell Grant, Visual Arts Department
UCSD
Faculty of Liberal Arts Outstanding Academic Achievement Award
Savannah College of Art and Design
Harrison Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research
University of Alabama, Birmingham
Background Image: Jess Holz, Plankton Painting 4/27/24 #88, Halls Pond, chronomicrograph, 2024.