Graduate School - Career Building Strategies and Skill Development
The Graduate School has compiled an extensive list with career building and skill development resources that are available to graduate students at Ohio State.
ImaginePhD
ImaginePhD is a free online career exploration and planning tool for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the humanities and social sciences.
ImaginePhD is designed to meet this need by allowing users to: assess their career-related skills, interests, and values, explore careers paths appropriate to their disciplines, create self-defined goals, and map out next steps for career and professional development success.
Beyond the Professoriate
Beyond Graduate School and Beyond The Professoriate provide detailed guidance on developing effective resumes, including instructional videos covering soft vs technical skills, resume formatting, sample resume sections, and more.
Both platforms are free to ASC graduate students and postdocs. You can log into the platform via your institution.
Graduate School - Career Building Strategies and Skill Development
The Graduate School has compiled an extensive list with career building and skill development resources that are available to graduate students at Ohio State.
ImaginePhD
ImaginePhD is a free online career exploration and planning tool for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the humanities and social sciences.
ImaginePhD is designed to meet this need by allowing users to: assess their career-related skills, interests, and values, explore careers paths appropriate to their disciplines, create self-defined goals, and map out next steps for career and professional development success.
Beyond the Professoriate
Beyond Graduate School and Beyond The Professoriate provide detailed guidance on developing effective resumes, including instructional videos covering soft vs technical skills, resume formatting, sample resume sections, and more.
Both platforms are free to ASC graduate students and postdocs. You can log into the platform via your institution.
Seunghan Paek, PhD
Quickly following the completion of his degree in 2014, Seunghan Paek (PhD 2014) took up a postdoc position with the Council on East Asian Studies (CEAS) at Yale. After his time with CEAS, Seunghan returned to his native South Korea where he is now an Assistant Professor at Pusan National University specializing in architectural theory. In addition to teaching, Seunghan has developed a number of publication and exhibition projects, including Ordinary Senses: JUNGLIM Architecture 50 Years. His studies at OSU continue to influence his work, which remains centered on the intersections of art, architecture, visual culture, and the city. His dissertation project on the phenomenon of commercial signage in contemporary Korea aimed to articulate theories of the everyday or the ordinary through the work of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilles Deleuze. “My interest in the everyday,” he says, “has now expanded into contemporary issues such as posthumanism, new materialism, affect theory, atmosphere, Object-Oriented Ontology, assemblage, and plasticity (to name a few).” Most recently, these interests have taken shape as undergraduate classes on South Korean Urbanism, Affective Urbanism, and Installation Art and Architectural Space, as well as two forthcoming book projects: Spectacularly Ordinary: Urbanism, Signs, and the Everyday in Contemporary South Korea and Indifferences: On Architecture’s Passibilities.
Michael Bowman, PhD
After completing his degree in the History of Art, Michael Bowman (PhD 2015) made a career pivot, channeling his knowledge and experience into higher education administration. Michael pursued a graduate certificate in Higher Education Administration from Northeastern University and a certificate in Public and Non-Profit Leadership from OSU’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs on his way to joining the staff here at Ohio State. Beginning as a program assistant in the College of Education and Human Ecology, Michael now works as the College Registrar for OSU’s College of Pharmacy. While he’s left his studies of art history and the Roman world in the rearview, he credits his successes, in part, to the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and investigative skills learned and honed through the History of Art program. “In a world coming to be dominated by quick-fix, AI-derived anti-solutions,” Michael says, “having the skills to organize and conduct a deep dive into a topic, or to think deeply about a problem and its context continue to serve me well.”
Yiwen Liu, PhD
Shortly after leaving OSU, Yiwen Liu (Phd 2021) kicked off a curatorial career working on China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta at the Cleveland Museum of Art. These days, Yiwen works as a project manager in Harvard’s Cognitive Aesthetics Media Lab (CAMLab), a research center that showcases art and cultural heritage using innovative technology and design. While working to present and preserve the artistic heritage of an ancient Buddhist kingdom via the Digital Gandhara project, Yiwen also leads planning for Cosmic Cycles of Life: New Perspectives on Mawangdui Tombs, an augmented art catalogue. At OSU, Yiwen was grateful to be surrounded by supportive and intellectually challenging faculty and students. “I think it is equally important to have excellent professors and supportive cohorts, [and] luckily I had both during my years at OSU.” Her career has been shaped by the guidance and expertise of her advisor, Professor Emeritus Julia Andrews, from whom Yiwen learned how to engage with collections and craft compelling curatorial narratives. Yiwen’s global and interdisciplinary perspective was shaped by courses in and out of the History of Art Department: working with Professors Namiko Kunimoto and Byron Hamann broadened her knowledge of art outside of China, while courses in the History Department and East Asian Languages and Literatures taught her to “read against the grain” and think across disciplines.
Sarah Magnatta, PhD
After working as an interpretive specialist in the Asian Art Department of the Denver Art Museum, Sarah Magnatta (PhD 2014) accepted a teaching position at the University of Denver. As an Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art, Sarah continues to draw inspiration from OSU’s History of Art faculty. She often finds herself assigning texts by Professor Emeritus Julia Andrews in her courses—“a testament to the clarity of thought and original perspectives throughout Andrews’ scholarship,” she says—and emulating the teaching styles of Professors Emeritus Susan and John Huntington. “Their teaching was driven by passion,” Sarah offers, “—a great motivator for students grappling with unfamiliar material.” Her research on Tibetan and Himalayan art has been shared recently in the journals HIMALAYA, Art Journal, and the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture; as well as in the Routledge Handbook of Asian Transnationalism and the exhibition catalogue for the 2023 Nepal Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Tales of Musted Spirits, Dispersed Threads, Twisted Shangri-La.
Keyu Yan (PhD 2025) begins his teaching career in fall 2025 as a full-time faculty member at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Teaching both undergraduate and graduate-level courses, Keyu draws on the breadth of OSU’s graduate programs in courses on East Asian art, contemporary global art, film studies, and the Western tradition. His experience teaching while studying at OSU set Keyu up for success on the academic job market: he had already developed several of his own syllabi and taught independent courses in East Asian and Chinese art before completing his degree. His time as a research assistant working with Professor Emeritus Julia Andrews and Professor Christopher Reed (Department of History) rounded out his research chops, while his work as the Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Research Associate on From Shanghai to Ohio: Woo Chong Yung (1898-1989) at the Cincinnati Art Museum gave him hands-on experience in the museum world. Armed with this wealth of experience gleaned at OSU, Keyu will continue his own research into Chinese, queer, and international contemporary art while developing compelling courses for his students at SCAD.
Trenton Olsen, PhD
Trenton Olsen (PhD 2020) was lucky to begin his current position as an assistant professor in Art History at Lindenwood University immediately after finishing his degree in 2020. Emphasizing writing and research skills alongside non-traditional methodological approaches informed by the digital humanities, Trenton’s teaching reflects OSU’s broad curriculum. “The depth and exposure to subfields across art history [at OSU] are critical,” Trenton says, “as I teach global surveys in each time period every semester. The work I did as a GTA prepared me for this learning and also helped me start developing skills as an instructor.” This engagement with pedagogical practice now shapes Trenton’s research as well. Along with others at Lindenwood University, he studies how digital tools—from virtual reality and digital reconstructions to artificial intelligence—can be leveraged in art historical classrooms. He is currently developing an immersive recreation of the historic 1785 French Salon exhibition, a restorative project that will not only enable users to experience the exhibition as its contemporaries did but also to view and study lost artworks. Trenton’s first book project, based largely on his dissertation “Post-Imperialist Masculinities: Portraiture and the Performance of French Manhood ca. 1815-1848,” is also in the works.