Dr. Temma Balducci

Department Chair

Professor of Art History

Biography

A faculty member at Arkansas State University since 2004, Balducci teaches modern and contemporary art history as well as courses on gender, race, and museum history. She has also directed several study-abroad programs including those to Spain, Italy, and Japan. She was promoted to Professor in 2017 and became Chair of Art + Design that same year.

Balducci’s research focuses on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century representations of gender, particularly as they intersect with issues of public and private spaces. She has authored or co-edited numerous books and articles, most recently “Domesticity, Creativity, and the Female Body: Matisse’s Red Studio,” in Aesthetic Orders of Dwelling (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2023): 363-77 and Gender, Space, and the Gaze in Post-Haussmann Visual Culture: Beyond the Flâneur (Routledge, 2017).

A strong advocate of engagement between Art + Design and the local community, Balducci sees art as a powerful economic driver. She is a member of the annual downtown OASIS Art & Eats Fest planning committee and serves on the recently formed Jonesboro Public Art Commission (JPAC). She also sits on the boards of Habitat for Humanity for Greater Jonesboro, Jonesboro-University Rotary, the A-State Museum, and the Arkansas Humanities Council.

Balducci has supported numerous collaborations across campus. She has worked with the Neil Griffin College of Business on several interdisciplinary degrees, most recently the new BS in Fashion Merchandising and Marketing, which will launch in Fall 2024. Her department has also worked with the College of Engineering and Computer Science on the Art + Innovation building that will house spaces for collaborations between the two disciplines.

The Clarksdale, Mississippi, native completed her doctoral degree in the History of Art at the University of Kansas in 2005. Her master's and bachelor's degrees are in History of Art and Education, respectively, from University of Alabama at Birmingham and Mississippi State University.