Faculty Research Connections Profile
Lisa Homann is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Specializing in West African masquerade practices from the late 19th century to the present, her research concentrates on performance, innovation, Islam and Muslim identities, patronage, and methodologies. She serves on UNC’s editorial board in the publishing consortium for the journal African Arts.
Currently, she is working on her first book, tentatively titled Visibly Muslim: White Mask Performance in Southwestern Burkina Faso. It considers how a masquerade, through its visual aesthetic and performance, can identify participants as Muslims and strengthen and challenge expectations of appropriate (public) behavior. While focusing on the history of this masquerade’s visual and performance aesthetics, the book project aims to problematize a perceived binary hostility between Islam and African art, particularly masquerade.
Homann has published articles and editorials in Res, African Arts, and Africa and her video footage of ephemeral masquerades is in the North Carolina Museum of Art's permanent collection.