Denise Carvalho's graduate education from UC Davis includes a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, with emphasis in Critical Theory, Feminist research, and Brazilian contemporary art, three Masters in Cultural Studies and Art History from UCD, and in Anthropology from Hunter College, and a B.F.A. from The School of Visual Arts. Over the last two decades, Carvalho has taught Women Studies at San Francisco State University, Contemporary Art History (graduate and undergraduate) at Humboldt State University, a graduate seminar in studio art at Pratt Institute, critical theory and philosophy at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts and became Chair of Independent Studies in 2009 at IDSVA. She has taught Latin American art history, graduate and undergraduate at NJCU and at Ohio State University. At NJCU, her teachings include graduate seminars in philosophy and critical theory, as well as art history from prehistory to contemporary art. She coordinated the thesis research for two graduate illustration classes at FIT. and at Indiana University Bloomington's department of art history, she taught several graduate and undergraduate classes in art history and Latin American art. In 2014, Carvalho was invited to be the Mellon Postdoctorate Fellow at the Wexner Center for the Arts, joining the curatorial team for the exhibition Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art from Brazil. Her role was both as a researcher, lecturer, and writer of the catalogue entries of the exhibition. She also taught in the Department of Art History at Ohio State, two graduate seminars in Brazilian contemporary art, organizing a graduate symposium that opened at the Wexner's event. In addition, Carvalho has been teaching art history at the School of Visual Arts since 2016, and since 2018, she created two new courses that have been extremely popular amongst the students: Art & Emotion and Art & Psychology; both courses explore seminal texts in philosophy and psychology that are linked to major art historical concepts and artists. In 2021 and 2022, she taught a large class titled Introduction to Theory and Criticism at the College of Arts at Buffalo University. Amongst her most recent published essays are “Art as Archive: Subversive Humor and Authenticity in Brazilian Art” to be included in the volume Humour, Emergency, Politics, Chrisoula Lionis, editor), Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Company, 2023; and “In the State of Play: Slapstick Enactments and Anarchic Humor as Political Subversion in Brazilian Contemporary Art” in Humor in Global Contemporary Art, Mette Gieskes and Gregory Williams (editors), published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023/24.

In addition, Dr. Carvalho is an independent contemporary art curator since 1999, with exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Dumbo Art Center, Chelsea Art Museum, San Diego Art Institute, Oi Futuro Flamengo Museu in Brazil, exhibitions in Poland, Czech Republic, and Istanbul, including two major biennials, with shows held at the National Museum in Poznan, City Gallery in Bialystok, Archdiocese Museum and Jesuit Gallery in Poznan, Zamek Castle in Poznan, and two permanent installations at the International Airport in Poznan. Her latest exhibition was part of the Mediations X in Istanbul at Feshane Museum. Carvalho has written numerous essays for art catalogues.

Dr. Carvalho is also an abstract painter, with recent exhibitions at the Public Library in Cazenovia in 2022, at Anita Shapolsky Gallery in NYC from 2018 to 2021, and at MvVo Art at the World Trade Center 3 in 2018. She began her career as an artist and art critic in the mid 1990s, writing for numerous art magazines such as Sculpture, ArtNexus, Art in America, Ceramics Art and Perception, Afterimage, NKA, and more recently in Hyperallergic and White Hot. She was also a fellow in 2012-2013 in the Writer's Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Denise Carvalho's website: denisecarvalho.squarespace.com

Carvalho, D. (2023). Art as Archive: Subversive Humour and Authenticity in Brazilian Art. In: Lionis, C. (eds) Comedy in Crises. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18961-6_12