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Biography
BA - University of Nottingham
MA - Courtauld Institute of Art, London
PhD - University of New South Wales, Sydney
Expertise Summary
Dr. Costanza Bergo is an early career Cultural Studies scholar and Art Historian who specialises in colonialism and displacement. Their PhD thesis, Atlas of Denial: Australian landscape and the settler-colonial structure of feeling, won the 2023 UNSW Dean's Award for Outstanding PhD Theses. Since the end of their PhD, Costanza has been involved in five research projects across both arts and social sciences, all of which focused on lived experience and displacement.
Their research has been published by Columbia University Press, History Workshop and Gothic Nature Journal.
Teaching Summary
I have taught on:
CULT1008 - Communication and Culture HART2043 - Black art in a White Context: Display, Critique and the 'Other' HART1005 - Reading and Writing Art History HART1035 - History of Art: Modern to Contemporary
Research Summary
Costanza's main research focus are the unconscious registers of contemporary structural violence - the inherently ambivalent network of unconscious drives that both uphold and disrupt colonial… read more
Selected Publications
COSTANZA BERGO, 2024. Looking at the garden to understand the tear: haunted landscape in settler-colonial Australia Gothic Nature Journal. (In Press.)
COSTANZA BERGO, 2024. The quarter-acre block: care and ecocide in the Australian settler garden Textures. 29, (In Press.)
Current Research
Costanza's main research focus are the unconscious registers of contemporary structural violence - the inherently ambivalent network of unconscious drives that both uphold and disrupt colonial world-building. They are predominantly interested in art and visual cultures as vehicles through which to map unrepresentable tensions - what Raymond Williams termed the 'structure of feeling'. Costanza is trained in both Arts and Social Science methodologies, and their research tends to be interdisciplinary. Their main theoretical frameworks are queer theory, decolonial theory, critical race theory and theory of representation (Hall).
Current research interests include: - Hidden histories, particularly in relation to colonialism and historical denial - Displacement and refugee rights, particularly queer experiences - Blue Humanities and poetics, particularly in relation to coastal borders, migration and the Atlantic slave trade - The aesthetics of occupation - Decolonial and fugitive art, particularly one that focuses around alternative world-building - Methodological critiques of History from a decolonial perspective