Recent Art History alumna Tess McCoy (PhD ’25) has been appointed Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of Art History at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. This semester, she is teaching multiple sections of Introduction to Native North American Art, in which she introduces students to the diverse and dynamic arts of Indigenous communities across Turtle Island (the United States and Canada). Course themes include materiality, cultural narrative, and artistic innovation. She also teaches Nineteenth-Century Art, exploring art from Europe and the United States and examining the period’s social and political transformations alongside developments in artistic practice. Her students represent a wide range of disciplines—from studio art and interior design to construction management and biomedical engineering—reflecting the broad reach of art historical study.
In addition to her teaching, Dr. McCoy is preparing a chapter on the materiality of resistance for a publication forthcoming with Palgrave in early 2026. Her contribution focuses on the work of Alaska Native artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq, Athabascan, Irish, German), particularly Small Secrets (2009) and Credible, Small Secrets (2022–2023). McCoy’s research considers Kelliher-Combs’s engagement with customary practices of skin sewing and beading, analyzing how these works embody persistence and serve as visual declarations of stories, histories, and lived experience.
Tess is especially enthusiastic about joining NAU, one of the few universities in the United States that requires all students to complete a course on Indigenous Peoples as part of its General Studies curriculum. This commitment ensures broad exposure to Indigenous histories, perspectives, and communities—an environment in which her teaching and research thrive.
