Faculty and Staff

Keri Watson, Ph.D.

• Associate Professor
• Keri.Watson@ucf.edu
• Office Hours: by appointment
• Campus Location: VAB105H

Keri Watson is the Director of the Florida Prison Education Project, Associate Professor of Art History, affiliated faculty in the Florida Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and Texts and Technology Ph.D. programs, and the faculty advisor for Black Man's Candor and Afro-Artistry at UCF. She teaches upper level courses in 19th-, 20th-Century and American Art, as well as special topics courses: The Art of Walt Disney, Southern Folk Arts, and African American Art. Dr. Watson's research, which focuses on the power of art to contribute to and challenge stereotypical representations of race, nationality, gender, sex, and dis/ability, has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Association of American Colleges and Universities, Fulbright-Terra Foundation, Southeastern College Art Conference, Society for the Preservation of American Modernists, and the Laughing Gull Foundation.

Education

• Ph.D. in Art History from Florida State University (2010)
• M.A. in Art History from Florida State University (2006)
• B.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from University of West Florida (2004)

Research Interests

• Modern and Contemporary Art
• American Studies
• Museum Studies
• Higher Education in Prisons

Selected Publications

Books

• Watson, Keri. Art of the Non-Western World. Dubuque: Great River Learning, 2017.

Films

• Watson, Keri, and Tim Reid. One More Dollar. Film. 2017.
• Watson, Keri. The Burden of History. Digital Story, 2016.
• Watson, Keri, Milos Adjinovis and Yson Dickson. Ward Hall: King of the Sideshow. Film, 2015.
• Watson, Keri, Milos Adjinovis and Yson Dickson. Johnny Meah: Czar of Bizarre. Film, 2015.

Articles/Essays

• Watson, Keri. “‘With a Smile and a Song’: Representations of People with Dwarfism in 1930s Cinema.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 14:2 (2020): 137-54. Print.
• Watson, Keri. “Precarious Memory: Eudora Welty and the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum.” Eudora Welty Review 12:1 (2020): 9-26. Print.
• Listengarten, Julia, Keri Watson, and Kate Kilpatrick. “Building Affective Solidarity and Creating Healthier Communities through the Arts: Interactions, Elaborations, and Interventions in Multiple Contexts.” The International Journal of Arts Education 14:4 (2019):1-14. Print.
• Listengarten, Julia and Keri Watson. “Staging Representations: Reflections on Performing Activism in a Visual Art and Theatre Collaboration.” Scene 6:1 (2019):21-50.
• Watson, Keri. “You’ve Got Art: Florida’s Post Office Murals.” In Florida Studies Review. Edited by Allyson D. Marino and Marcy L. Galbreath, 88-101. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018.
• Watson, Keri. "Curating Controversy in the Trump Era." Museums and Social Issues: A Journal of Reflective Discourse (2017). 
• Watson, Keri, and Anastasia Salter. “Secret Societies of the Avant-garde,” GLS 11 Conference Proceedings, eds. Kyrie H. Caldwell et al (2016): 440-43.
• Watson, Keri, and Anastasia Salter. "Playing Art Historian: Teaching 20th-Century Art through Alternate Reality Gaming," International Journal for Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning 1:1 (2016): 100-111.
• Watson, Keri. “Disability in Art History.” Art History Teaching Resources Lesson Plans (2015). 
• Watson, Keri. "'Before We Were Us, We Were Them': Curating Controversy," Journal of Museum Education 39 (2014): 96-107. 
• Watson, Keri. “Parody as Political Tool in Patricia Cronin’s Memorial to a Marriage.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 43:2 (2010): 79-94.    
• Fredericks, Keri. “The Country Cousin: Advocating an Arcadian America.” Athanor 26 (2008): 81-89.

Book Sections/Chapters

• Watson, Keri. “Picturing the Other: Disability and Difference in Eudora Welty’s Photographs and Stories.” Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-first Century Approaches. Eds. Julia Eichelberger and Mae Miller Claxton. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.    
• Watson, Keri and Patsy Moskal. “Scaling an Art History Reacting to the Past Game for Use at a Large Public University.” Playing to Learn with Reacting to the Past. Eds. C. Edward Watson and Thomas Chase Hagood. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.    
• Watson, Keri. "Difference and Disability: The Photography of Margaret Bourke-White." Disability and Art History. Eds. Ann Millet-Gallant and Elizabeth Howie. New York: Routledge, 2017. 
• Watson, Keri. Eudora Welty’s Making a Date, Grenada, Mississippi: One Photograph, Five Performances.” Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race. Ed.Harriet Pollack. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013.
• Wylder, Viki Thompson and Keri Fredericks. “Evoke/Invoke/Provoke: A Case Study of Judy Chicago’s Feminist Pedagogy, Vanderbilt University, Spring Semester 2006." In Florida Without Borders: Women at the Intersections of the Local and Global, edited by Sharon Kay Masters, 141-60. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.    

Awards

• 2020       Laughing Gull Foundation Grant (Florida Prison Education Project)
• 2020       National Endowment for the Art Big Read (Silver Sparrow)
• 2019       Laughing Gull Foundation Grant (Florida Prison Education Project)
• 2019       National Endowment for the Arts Big Read (The Things They Carried)
• 2019       UCF Office of Faculty Excellence Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award
• 2019       UCF Office of Faculty Excellence Research Incentive Award
• 2019       UCF Office of Faculty Excellence Teaching Incentive Program Award
• 2018       National Endowment for the Arts Artworks Grant (Florida Prison Education Project)
• 2018       Pabst-Steinmetz Award for Arts and Wellness
• 2018       Southeastern College Art Conference Award for Outstanding Exhibition 
• 2018       Association of American Colleges and Universities Endeavor Foundation Grant
• 2018       National Endowment for the Arts Big Read (Station Eleven)
• 2018       American Association of State Colleges and Universities Grant
• 2017       Fulbright-Terra Foundation Award in the History of American Art
• 2017       National Endowment for the Arts Big Read (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears)
• 2017       Institute of Museum and Library Services Grant
• 2017       UCF Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award
• 2016       UCF Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellow
• 2016       National Endowment for the Arts Big Read (The Grapes of Wrath)
• 2015       Society for the Preservation of American Modernists Grant
• 2015       National Endowment for the Arts Big Read (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
• 2015       UCF Office of Commercialization and Research In-House Research Grant
• 2014       UCF College of Arts and Humanities Research Initiative Program Grant
• 2013       Southeastern College Art Conference Award for Best Exhibition of Historical Materials

Activities

Director, The Florida Prison Education Project

Courses

• Spring 2022
• Fall 2021
• Summer 2021
• Spring 2021
• Fall 2020
• Summer 2020