Germanic Languages and Literatures Certificate Student, PhD Student in Department of the History of Art
She/Her/Hers
About
Sarah Wheat is a PhD Candidate in the History of Art at the University of Michigan with a focus on nineteenth and twentieth century architecture and design. She is also a Certificate Student within the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation project, written under the supervision of Professor Claire Zimmerman, is titled “Harem Mystique: Popular Architecture and the Orient ca. 1900.” The project explores the ways in which spatial images of the harem were appropriated and commodified in design trends for homes, cafes, cabarets, cinemas, and public baths in Germany and the United States at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. The study pays particular attention to the ways in which women experienced such environments and includes considerations of spatial design, gender, feminist histories, and the geopolitics of representation.
Sarah received her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with a thesis titled “The Architect as Nomad: A Critical Reading of Bruno Taut’s Theory of Architecture (Architekturlehre, 1938).” She has previously received research funding from the DAAD and is currently a fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (2022/23).
