JoLynn Edwards

Professor Emeritus

B.A., General and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Washington
Ph.D., Art History, 1982, University of Washington

JoLynn Edwards is one of the founding faculty members of UW Bothell (1990) and was named program director for the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences program in 2003. She also served as General Faculty Organization chair and Lecture and Concert Committee chair.

Teaching

At UWB I teach a variety of classes that encompass aspects of cultural history, visual culture, and comparative arts. I search to find common themes and the “friendly frictions” among visual, literary, dance, and musical “texts.” My undergraduate degree on the comparative arts of the early modern period in Europe has grounded my lifelong dedication to interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary studies. As an art historian trained primarily in the western traditions from antiquity to the twentieth century and secondarily in east Asian cultures, I am interested in aesthetic connections among works of art across time and space as well as within one tradition. Two new courses, the “Cultural History of Rome” and “Paris: The City and its History,” have allowed me to expand my interest into the phenomenon of urbanism. I try to elicit student enthusiasm for each subject and engagement with the content areas through response and research papers, small group discussions, and individual presentations or group projects.

Courses Taught

BIS 490 Senior Seminar: Arts in Seattle
BISIA 319 Interdisciplinary Arts Core Class
BIS 309 History of Dance in Europe and America
BIS 372 Comparative Arts in 18th-Century Europe
BIS 373 Cultural History of Rome
BIS 376 Circa 1500: Arts of West and East
BISCLA 380 Art and its Context
BIS 417 Paris: The City and its History
BIS 476 Issues in Art History: Painting in the Age of Rembrandt
BIS 478 Art Patronage and Markets

Research/Scholarship

My research interests encompass the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly French painting and drawing, Baroque dance and ballet d’action, and the rise of the art market and the commodification of culture before the French Revolution. Having worked in the area of the Parisian art market over the last twenty years culminating with my book, Alexandre-Joseph Paillet: expert et marchand de tableaux a la fin du XVIIIe siecle (1996), I have expanded my interests in the eighteenth century and published an article on Louis-Francois de Bourbon, prince de Conti, an important collector of luxury products, including paintings, whose after-death sales flooded and destabilized the Parisian art market at the end of the 1770s. Conti’s mistress, Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon, comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel (1724-1800), was one of the leading women of late ancien regime Paris, who bridged the mondain and philosophe spheres. I am preparing an article on the correspondence between her and the philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume.

Selected Publications

  • 2010 鈥淭he Conti Sales of 1777 and 1779 and Their Impact on the Parisian Art Market,鈥� Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 39, 69-102.
  • 2006 鈥淲atteau鈥檚 Drawings: Artful and Natural,鈥� in Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of his Time, Mary Sheriff, editor, University of Delaware Press, 41-62.
  • 2001 “John Law and his Painting Collection: Connoisseur or Dupe?” for the anthology, Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture: New Dimensions and Multiple Perspectives, Elise Goodman, editor (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press): 59-75.