Overview
Jenna's research focuses on the history of American photography from the nineteenth century to the present with an emphasis on the development of corporate capitalism in the United States. Her dissertation project focuses on early industrial pictures of coal mining in Pennsylvania and analyzes the emergence of industrial photography as a distinct genre at the end of the nineteenth century.
Jenna earned a B.A. in Art History and Economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2015) and a M.A. in the History of Art from Williams College and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts (2019). Before matriculating to Cornell, she was the Marcia Brady Tucker Curatorial Fellow in the photography department at the Yale University Art Gallery (2019-2021). She has held internships at the Clark Art Institute, the Speed Art Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky, and MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), in North Adams, Massachusetts.