April F. Masten

Assistant Professor

S313 Social and Behavioral Sciences

Phone: (631) 632-7483

April Masten is Associate Professor of American History at Stony Brook University. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University, an M.A. in the Social History of Art from Leeds University, and a B.A. in Music from San Francisco State University. Masten’s scholarship explores the interplay between cultural production and political economies. Her publications include Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); “Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art,”American Quarterly 56:2 (June 2004), which won the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association 2005 Article Prize; “Dancing Through American History,”Common-Place, vol. 6, no. 1 (October 2005); and “Model into Artist: The Changing Face of Art Historical Biography,” Women’s Studies 21: 1 (1992). She has also published in The Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, American National Biography, and Newsday. In 2005 Masten was invited by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals to speak on the challenges of interdisciplinary writing at the Modern Language Association Conference in Washington D.C. The research for her first book was supported by a “Drawn to Art” Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and a grant from the American Association of University Women. Her current research explores the exchange of dance and music among African, Irish, and Native North Americans.

Masten, April F. "Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art" American Quarterly - Volume 56, Number 2, June 2004, pp. 348-394