Professor Odell teaches courses on the history of European and East Asian art, with a particular focus on works produced between 1600 and 1800. Across her courses, she emphasizes the ways in which art, artists, and ideas circulate globally. She is especially interested in the artistic production of major port cities—including Canton, Jakarta, Cape Town, Manila, Charleston, and Amsterdam—and the shared visual culture that emerged among these cosmopolitan centers.
Whatever the course topic, Professor Odell encourages students to engage with questions that are as relevant today as they were in the past. These include art crimes (such as theft, forgery, looting, and iconoclasm); the qualities that make an artwork appear lifelike or “real” and the effects of that realism on viewers; the influence of urban environments on identity and belonging (How do architecture, signage, clothing, and popular publications shape one’s sense of being at home or estranged?); and the history and ethics of museums.
Professor Odell’s research closely complements her teaching. She is currently writing a book about the eighteenth-century Dutch merchant A. E. van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801), who spent much of his adult life in China and the United States. During his final residence in Canton, van Braam assembled a substantial art collection, which he transported to Pennsylvania and displayed at his estate, “China’s Retreat.” This may be the first documented display of a collection of “Chinese art” in the United States. Much of van Braam’s art was auctioned in London in 1799 and was long thought lost, but several of the objects have recently come to light. By studying both the lost and surviving works, Professor Odell seeks to recover the presence of the individuals—many of whom have been overlooked or erased from the historical record—who created, collected, and gave meaning to these objects.
Professor Odell is also co-editing a volume of essays, Nonextant Art: Studies in Speculative Art History, 1492–1800, with Reed College Professor Dana Katz. The collection builds on ideas that Professors Odell and Katz first developed while co-teaching a course on art that no longer exists, offered jointly by Lewis & Clark College and Reed College.
Academic Credentials
PhD 2003, Art History, University of Chicago
MA 1993, East Asian Studies, Harvard University
BA 1986, Art History, Carleton College
Teaching
- Core 120: Art Crimes
- Art 100: Introduction to European Art
- Art 150: Introduction to Chinese Art
- Art 230: Global Baroque
- Art 232: The Politics of Collection and Display (overseas Japan/Korea program, next offered summer 2027)
- Art 361: Modern China
- Art 367: Nonextant Art (co-taught with Reed faculty)
- Art 493: Senior Seminar for Art History majors
- Art 451: Special Topics - Night, Darkness, and Print Culture (upcoming 2027)
Research
“Chinese Porcelain Re-Made: A Projectile Point on the Northwest Coast of America,” (Re)Made in China: Material Disconnections, Art, and Creative Reuse, Anna Grasskamp, editor, de Gruyter, 2025.
“Who or What Speaks in a Global History of Art?” Journal18, October 2024. https://www.journal18.org/7431
“How to Read a Chinese Painting in a European Book,” The Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art, Stephen J. Campbell and Stephanie Porras, editors, Routledge, 2024.
Book Review: Global Objects: Toward a Connected History of Art, sehepunkte 24 (2024). https://www.sehepunkte.de/preview/37407
Book Review: Rarities of these Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, HNA Reviews, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (2023). https://hnanews.org/hnar/reviews/rarities-of-these-lands-art-trade-and-diplomacy-in-the-dutch-republic/
“Ekphrasis and the Global Eighteenth Century: A.E. van Braam Houckgeest’s Collection of Chinese Art,” Ekphrastic Image Making in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, volume 79, Arthur J. DiFuria and Walter S. Melion, editors, Brill, 2022.
“’Chinese’ Art in the Dutch East Indies,” Cultural Exchange Between Europe and Southeast Asia, Hazel Hahn, editor, University of Singapore Press, 2019.
“Delftware and the Domestication of Chinese Porcelain,” EurAsia Objects: Art and Material Culture in Global Exchange, 1600-1800, Monica Juneja and Anna Grasskamp, editors, University of Heidelberg, Series on Transcultural Studies, 2018.
“Depicting Desire: Chinese ‘Paintings of Beauties’ and Images of Asia in a Jesuit Text,” The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, Walter Melion, Michael Zell, Joanna Woodall, editors, Brill, 2017.
“Chinese Painting and Dutch Book Arts,” The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400-1700: Essays in Honor of Larry Silver, Debra Cashion, Henry Luittikhuizen, Ashley West, editors, Brill, 2017.
Book Review: Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age, CAA Reviews, March 8, 2017, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2870#.WmuEJ62ZNsN
Midwestern Arcadia: Essays in Honor of Alison Kettering (Editor) Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, https://apps.carleton.edu/kettering/, 2014.
“Porcelain, Print Culture and Mercantile Aesthetics” The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan, editors, Ashgate, 2010.
“Public Identity and Material Culture in Dutch Batavia,” Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, Jaynie Anderson, editor, Miegunyah Press, 2009.
“Creaturely Invented Letters and Dead Chinese Idols,” Idols in the Age of Art, Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach, editors, Ashgate, 2009.
“Clothing, Customs and Mercantilism: Dutch and Chinese Ethnographies in the Seventeenth Century,” Picturing the Exotic 1550-1950, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 53, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2003.
“The Soul of Transactions: Illustration and Johan Nieuhof’s Travels to China,” Tweelinge eener dragt: Woord en beeld in de Nederlanden (1500-1750), The Seventeenth Century, Vol. 12, No. 3, Verloren, 2001.
“Is THIS the Orient?” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue, Vol. 5, No. 3, Brill, 1999.