Emily Morgan PhD

Bio

Research Interests

History of photography; photography of industry; circulation and distribution of photographic imagery; animal studies.

Emily Kathryn Morgan is an Associate Professor of Art History at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on histories of photography. Her current project considers visual cultures of industrial-scale animal slaughter and meat production in the United States. Previous research projects have focused on the appropriation of pornographic imagery in American modernist photography; and on photographically illustrated accounts of poverty and street culture in nineteenth-century Britain. She is also engaged in collaborative research with scholars in veterinary humanities, animal studies, and anthropology, examining how representations of animals circulate in animal production industries.

Dr. Morgan’s book Imaging Animal Industry: American Meatpacking in Photography and Visual Culture was published in August 2024 by the University of Iowa Press. She is also the author of Street Life in London: Context and Commentary (MuseumsEtc. 2014). She has published articles in Art Journal, History of Photography, Food and History, and Animal Studies Journal, among others. She received her Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art from the University of Arizona.

Current Projects

Selected scholarship:

Book: Morgan, Emily Kathryn. Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2024.

Article: Bellet, Camille, and Emily Kathryn Morgan. “Co-valence in Cow-veillance: Sensing Technologies and Human-Animal Affinities in Dairying.” In press with Science, Technology, & Human Values. DOI 10.1177/01622439241280177

Article: Bellet, Camille, and Emily Kathryn Morgan. “Breed(ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values in Industrial Farming.” Animal Studies Journal 11:1 (2022): 200-255. Published online at https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/vol11/iss1/10 .

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn. “’Those Truly Augean Stables’: International Visions of Chicago’s Packingtown.” Food and History 16:2 (2019): 107-134.

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “Harry Callahan’s Pornographic Appropriations.” Art Journal 77:3 (Fall 2018): 92-112.  DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2018.1530013

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “Waterloo Packer: Selling Slaughter.”  History of Photography 42:2 (May 2018), 128-145.  DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2018.1500786

Article: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  "Striking Images: Photographs of Iowa Packinghouse Labor Conflict, 1948-1960.” Annals of Iowa 77:2 (Spring 2018): 151-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.12500

Book chapter: Morgan, Emily Kathryn.  “’True Types of the London Poor’: Street Life in London’s Transitional Typology,” in Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary: Local Practices and Global Contexts, eds. Lynda Klich and Tara Zanardi.  New York: Routledge, 2018: 121-134.

Invited presentation: “Photographing Industrial Slaughter in Chicago’s Packingtown,” American Meat Science Association Webinar Series, May 24, 2022. Recording available at https://meatscience.org/publications-resources/webinars/webinar/photographing-industrial-slaughter-in-chicago's-packingtown

Invited presentation: “Imaging Animal Industry: Visualizing the American Meatpacking Trade,” Visual Studies Research Institute, University of Southern California. Part of the VSRI lecture series "Selling the Story: Commercial Pictures and Visual Persuasion,” co-sponsored by VSRI and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dec. 5, 2019.

Conference presentation: “Rendering Rendering: Photographing Animal Extraction,” College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Photography Network sponsored session, New York, NY, Feb. 15, 2023.

Conference presentation: “’You are Walking Through Blood Now’: Routine and Rupture in the Packinghouse,” British Animal Studies Network (BASN), Virtual conference, April 16, 2021.

Conference presentation: “’The Hog-Squeal of the Universe’: Photographing Industrial Slaughter," College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Feb. 11, 2021.