Emily Hyatt

Emily Hyatt is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of the History of Art. Her research engages with histories of materials in Italy and the German-speaking world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, particularly how practices of material extraction, circulation, reuse, and decay were entangled with early modern knowledge production and ways of making. By considering links between manufactured objects and representations of processes such as woodfelling, papermaking, and mining, she aims to understand how shifting notions of environment shaped visual and material culture. Hyatt’s current project analyzes the emergence and spread of papier-mâché/cartapesta to question how this ephemeral modeling medium participated in artistic and scientific regimes in early modern Europe. She holds a B.A. in Art History and Visual Art from Columbia University and an M.A. in Transcultural Studies from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in Germany, where her thesis traced uses of silica pebbles and saltwort plants in Venetian glassmaking.