Doctoral Candidate Tess McCoy Receives Phillips Fund & Departmental Grants for Dissertation Research Travel

Doctoral candidate Tess McCoy has been awarded several research grants to aid in the continuation of her dissertation. She was awarded the American Philosophical Society’s Phillips Fund for Native American Research. This fund provides grants to those whose projects focus on Native American history and work with Native communities within the U.S. and Canada. Tess was also awarded the FSU Department of Art History Mason Dissertation Research Award and the Helen J. Beard Conference Travel Grant.

Throughout the past summer and continuing this fall, Tess’s travels take her to Washington D.C., New York, and several cities in Alaska and Canada to pursue research for her dissertation, “The Art of Indigenous Storytelling: Abstract Counter-Narrations in the Installation Works of Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Hannah Claus, and Maureen Gruben.” This project engages these three Indigenous women artists’ practices and artworks through materiality, relationality, and experiential engagement. Utilizing the theoretical and methodological approaches of visual sovereignty and storywork, Tess reveals these pieces as storied objects.

Right: Credible, Idiot Strings, Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq, Athabascan, Irish, German), 2022, printed cotton fabric, nylon thread, wool, steel wire, monofilament. Above: Downtown Juneau, Alaska.