Region: Atlantic World; Caribbean; Europe; Iberia; Low Countries
Time: 16th Century; 17th Century
Theme: Colonialism; Environmental Humanities; History of Art and Architecture; History of the Book; Maritime Humanities

Elena Janney works on the visual culture of the early modern Age of Encounter, with a particular focus on European expeditionary art of the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She is interested in the transmission of artistic practices and materials through trade and colonial exploration in the Atlantic contact zone, and in the preoccupation, throughout the Renaissance visual field, with the depiction of distant peoples and lands. Elena’s research engages with legacies of slavery and colonialism, problems of cross-cultural encounter, and environmental histories. Before beginning her doctoral studies at Harvard University, Elena received her BA in Art History and Hispanic Studies from Vassar College in 2018.