Shana Cooperstein currently is pursuing a Ph.D. in art history at McGill University. Her doctoral research, titled "Reading Between the Lines: Post-Academic Drawing Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century France," examines the role that philosophies of the mind and senses played in the development of art-making practices. This scholarship, largely centered on the education of the eye and questions of habit acquisition, stems from a previous article Shana has published in Leonardo on the authority of the visible over advanced astronomical imaging techniques.
Shana's broader expertise in European and North American modernism also has led her to pursue curatorial projects; these range from representations of medical practitioners, and the relationship between medicine and beauty, at The Osler Library of the History of Medicine, to research on Alexander Calder as an intern at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Given her strong curatorial background, she was invited recently to extend her tenure as Max Stern Fellow at McGill's Visual Arts Collection.