Elissa Watters

Elissa Watters is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art History and a recipient of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate. Her focus lies in Modern European and Contemporary Art, with a focus on the intersection of art–often works on paper–and politics. Her dissertation, titled “Modernist Anarchism: Radical Artmaking in the German Rhineland between the World Wars,” explores the radical modes of sociability, representation, and intermediality practiced by anarchist artists in interwar Europe, particularly the Rhineland. Her other research projects include the radical potentiality of the pop-up format as used by Kara Walker in her 1997 book Freedom: A Fable and the subtle resistance tactics found in the World War II-era drawings of little-known German artist Renate Geisberg.

Elissa holds a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College and an M.A. in the History of Art from Williams College and The Clark Art Institute. Prior to starting at USC, Elissa was the Florence B. Selden Senior Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery. In addition to working on the exhibition On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale (Yale University Art Gallery, Sept. 10, 2021–Jan. 9, 2022), she has also guest curated several exhibitions, including Art, Sport, and Propaganda: 1972 Munich Olympics (Williams College Museum of Art, Jul. 30–Aug. 17, 2021), In Community: Arts at Blue Roof at USC Fisher (USC Fisher Museum of Art, Apr. 12–May 12, 2023), and The Noise of Us (Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Oct. 26, 2024–Mar. 8, 2025). Her publications include “Édouard Manet, the Printmaker” (Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 2019) and “On the (Un)Seeable in Wassily Kandinsky’s Klänge” (Word & Image, 2022).

ewatters@usc.edu

• MA Williams College, 6/2018
• BA Dartmouth College, 6/2015