The CMCS Advisory Committee offers guidance to the Directors on strategic planning and Center initiatives, and assists in the vetting process for CMCS grants. The members of the current Advisory Committee are: Petra Clark, Catharine Dann Roeber, Kedron Thomas, Jennifer Van Horn.
Petra Clark – Assistant Librarian and Instruction Librarian for Special Collections
Petra Clark is an Instruction Librarian for Special Collections at the University of Delaware Library, Museums & Press. Since starting this role in 2023, her work has largely encompassed teaching and outreach using the collections, curating exhibitions in the library, and providing reference and research support. She is one of the curators of the exhibition What They Saved: Souvenirs and Mementos in Special Collections, on view in the Special Collections Gallery for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Before becoming a library professional, Petra earned an MA and a PhD in English from the University of Delaware, with a focus on Victorian print, visual, and material culture. From 2011-2021, she taught undergraduate courses in composition, literature, and the liberal arts at UD, Rowan University, and the Delaware College of Art and Design (DCAD). Her scholarship has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Victorian Periodicals Review and the Journal of Victorian Culture, and most recently, in the edited collection Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture (2023). As a graduate student, Petra was awarded DELPHI and Friends of Rockwood fellowships through CMCS and is delighted to now contribute to the Center’s work as a member of the advisory committee.
Catharine Dann Roeber – Director of Academic Affairs and Brock W. Jobe Associate Professor of Decorative Arts and Material Culture (WPAMC)
In addition to teaching and leading the Academic Affairs Division at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Catharine Dann Roeber is executive editor of Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture and Director of Winterthur’s Research Fellowship Program. Her work centers supporting, advocating for, and participating in endeavors to build a more equitable and inclusive future for cultural heritage, decorative arts, and material culture studies, and conservation through exhibitions, programs, teaching, mentoring, and community collaboration. Catharine teaches graduate courses for the Winterthur Program, including American Interiors, Exhibitions and Interpretation, British Design History and additional independent studies and field study courses. Her areas of research include decorative arts and material culture, culinary history, history of print and ephemera, and Pennsylvania material and architectural heritage. She recently co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture and curated the exhibition Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur. Roeber draws on her background of international experience with archeology departments, research libraries, museums and cultural non-profits in encouraging people to enjoy and study stuff.
Kedron Thomas – Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Kedron Thomas, Anthropology.
Kedron Thomas, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in textiles, clothing, and fashion, especially the diversity of what people wear and how it is made. Her first book, Regulating Style: Intellectual Property Law and the Business of Fashion in Guatemala (University of California Press, 2016), is based on long-term research with Indigenous Maya apparel manufacturers who make clothing that features unauthorized reproductions of fashion brands. She examines the rise of “knockoff” fashion in Central America amidst the politics of race and indigeneity, efforts by the Guatemalan state and international institutions to promote entrepreneurship and national development after nearly four decades of armed conflict, and the globalization of intellectual property regimes that criminalize practices of brand “piracy.” Her current book project describes the politics of environmental sustainability and labor rights from the perspectives of designers, marketers, and brand and supply chain managers at fashion and footwear firms in cities across the US and UK. Tentatively titled, Sustainability in the Making: Labor, Ethics, and Ecology in the Global Fashion Industry, the book narrates how fashion professionals are attempting to build more environmentally sustainable and ethical supply chains.
Thomas earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 2012. Before joining the University of Delaware, she was associate professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Jennifer Van Horn – Associate Professor, Departments of Art History and History
Jennifer Van Horn is an Assistant Professor of Art History and History at the University of Delaware. She teaches courses in American art, material culture, and museum studies. Her research interests range from George Washington’s dentures, to women’s embroidery, to wooden legs. Her current book project, Resisting the Art of Enslavement: Slavery and Portraiture in American Art, examines the connections between enslavement and portrait making and viewing in the 18th and 19th century plantation South. She has recently held senior fellowships at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum and at CASVA (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts) at the National Gallery of Art. She is the author of The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America (Chapel Hill, 2017) which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize, and received an honorable mention for the Louis Gottschalk Prize in Eighteenth-Century Studies. She has published articles in Art Bulletin, American Art, Early American Studies, and Winterthur Portfolio.
Professor Van Horn earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Delaware. A graduate of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, she worked on the curatorial staff at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and taught at George Mason University and the Corcoran’s MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts, before returning to the University of Delaware.