Sophia Farmer

Dr. Sophia Maxine Farmer is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky. She earned her Ph.D. in 2019, her M.A. in 2014 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her B.A. in 2012 from the University of Toronto. Before joining Kentucky, she was Assistant Professor of Art History in the Art and Design Department at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith from 2021 to 2024. She has received the following fellowships: two Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Scholars Program at The Getty Research Institute (2019–2020); a Wolfsonian – Florida International University Fellowship (2018); a Visiting Graduate Student Fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University (2018); and a Graduate Fellowship at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York (2017).

 

Dr. Farmer’s primary specialization is in Italian modernism with secondary interests in art under fascism, ecocritical art history, and collection, heritage, and preservation practices. Her current book project, Of Flesh and Metal: Artificial Life and the Futurist Cyborg, considers how visions of artificial beings in Italian Futurist art and literature engage with developments in science fiction, science, and technology. She has published research on a variety of topics in both collective volumes and academic journals including Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies, the Journal of the History of Collections, and the Getty Research Journal.