Lacy Murphy

Lacy holds a BA in French from Truman State University and earned her MA and PhD in art history from WashU. She defended her dissertation, “Colliding Worlds: Visual Culture in France and Colonial Algeria (1918-1962),” in Fall 2023. Her dissertation was the first comprehensive examination of the apogee, deterioration, and conclusion of French colonialism in Algeria as well as the genesis, fermentation, and apex of Algerian nationalism through ephemeral and reproductive media. Lacy received the Mark Tessler Graduate Student Prize for her dissertation research related to visual propaganda during World War II in Algeria. Broadly, Lacy’s research interests include studying the motivations and intentions behind state-sponsored reproductive media, and how visual media is used to advance ideologies and political agendas, especially in regard to the representation of conflict in the Arab world. She teaches about modern art and architecture in the Middle East and North Africa, Islamic Art, and about the relationships between Islamic art and European modernism. She has completed fellowships at WashU’s Center for the Humanities, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and a residency at the National Humanities Center.