OU School of Visual Arts
Having earned a B.A. degree in French from Washburn University, Dr. Caldwell studied French literature and art history at the Université de Montpellier in France. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History at Cornell University in 1974, majoring in Medieval Art with minors in Modern Art and Medieval Literature. Her dissertation is entitled “The Introduction and Diffusion of the Romanesque Projecting Single-Portal Unit in Northern Spain.” After teaching courses at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, and Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont, as Assistant Professor she taught for two years in the Art Department at Boise State College in Boise, Idaho, before joining the faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 1976. She teaches courses in Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, Women’s Studies, Methodologies and Theories, and related seminars. She has team-taught interdisciplinary courses in art and literature in the 20th century and in the medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as art and music in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, some of these courses for the Honors College. She has lectured at Oxford University and at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. In 2008 she participated in a President’s “Dream Course” entitled “Russian Arts in the Twentieth Century.” In all, Dr. Caldwell has taught close to forty different courses during her career.
Dr. Caldwell has published scholarly and critical articles and exhibition reviews on medieval, contemporary, renaissance, and folk art. She wrote the initial catalogue of sculptor Ken Little’s work, on which further catalogues and articles have been based. She wrote the original script and collaborated with Dr. Eugene Enrico in the School of Music in all facets of the educational video “’And They Sang a New Song’: Twenty-Four Musical Elders at Santiago de Compostela,” now internationally distributed by the Roland Collection in England. Her research monograph entitled Queen Sancha’s ‘Persuasion’: A Regenerated León Symbolized in San Isidoro’s Pantheon and its Treasures was published in 2001 by Global Publications, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Binghamton University. For the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, she curated an exhibition in 2002 entitled “Art of the Sixties” and wrote an extensive catalogue for the exhibition as well. Her two ongoing areas of investigation are represented in two book projects currently underway: ’Domus Feminis’: Royal Leonese Women and San Isidoro in León, and a second book studying the careers and paintings of two former School of Art and Art History professors: George Bogart and Eugene Bavinger. Dr. Caldwell has earned a number of awards for her teaching and service, including the Regents Award for Superior Teaching (1985), two University of Oklahoma Associates Distinguished Lectureship Awards (1984-85, 1988-89), the Governor’s Arts and Education Award (1994), two University of Oklahoma Student Association Outstanding Professor of the College of Fine Arts awards (1996 and 1986), the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Fine Arts (1998), the Oklahoma Museums Association Individual Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Support of Oklahoma Museums (2003, and the Irene and Julian J. Rothbaum Presidential Professor of Excellence in the Arts Award (2003). She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art, International Who’s Who of Contemporary Achievement, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who of American Women.
