Rate My Professor April Eisman

April Eisman is a Professor of Art and Visual Culture specializing in Contemporary Art History at Iowa State University of Science and Technology, College of Design. She holds a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and a BA in English and Art History from Lawrence University. Eisman joined Iowa State University in 2007 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013, and to Professor in 2024. Prior roles include Fulbright Scholar at Technische Universität Dresden in 2023-2024 and co-curator of the exhibition “Angela Hampel: Das Künstlerische Werk / The Artistic Work” at Städtische Galerie Dresden in 2021-2022.

Her research specializes in contemporary art and theory, focusing on East German art and its post-unification reception, alongside post-colonialism, post-socialism, feminism, and Marxism. Eisman has published over thirty journal articles and book chapters. Key publications include her monograph, Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany (Camden House, 2018); co-edited books Angela Hampel: Das Künstlerische Werk / The Artistic Work (2022) and Kunst in der DDR – 30 Jahre Danach (2021); and articles such as “Symbolic Erasures and Populist Discontent: The Post-War Rebuilding of Historic Dresden” (Monatshefte, 2022), “East German Art and the Permeability of the Berlin Wall” (German Studies Review, 2015), and “Painting the East German Experience: Neo Rauch in the Late 1990s” (Oxford Art Journal, 2012). She has received the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award (2023-2024), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2018-2019) for research on Angela Hampel, and fellowships from the American Association of University Women, DAAD, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and U.S. Department of Education. Eisman co-founded the Transatlantic Institute for East German Art and co-organized the NEH Summer Institute “Culture in the Cold War: East German Art, Music and Film” in 2018. Her curatorial and scholarly contributions have significantly influenced the field of East German visual culture studies.