art historian & professor

Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Professor Weichbrodt received her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Covenant College in 2004, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis. Her dissertation, Through the Body: Corporeality, Subjectivity, and Empathy in Contemporary American Art, explored the relationship between embodied experience, subjectivity, and empathy expressed in artworks created and exhibited in New York in the early 1990s and linked with identity politics. 

Today, her research and teaching explores representations of race and gender in art and visual culture from the nineteenth century to the present. Professor Weichbrodt's essay "Found or Recovered?: Competing Views of Paradise in Late Nineteenth-Century Hawaiian Landscape Painting" was published in The Religion and Arts Journal. This is especially exciting since she was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up seeing some of these paintings at her local museum.  Current projects include essays on representations of race in photography and considering the historiographic practices of artists. Her first book, Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art, was released by Baker Academic Press in March 2023 and was the winner of Christianity Today's 2024 Award of Merit (Culture and the Arts) and The Gospel Coalition 2023 Book Award (Arts & Culture).

Professor's Weichbrodt's primary passion is teaching, and she loves introducing students to the largely unfamiliar discipline of art history.  Her courses include: Introduction to Art, Introduction to Art History, History and Theory of Photography, Global Modernisms, Women, Art, & Culture, Race in American Art, Art & the Church, and Contemporary Art & Criticism: 1970 to the Present. She also teaches the senior thesis class for studio and art history concentrations at Covenant College. Her classroom has also expanded to include teaching at various churches and conferences including TGCWomen's Conference, Jubilee, Housemoot, and Square Halo.

Professor Weichbrodt lives in Chattanooga with her husband, Noel, and two sons. She enjoys biking, hiking, and cooking for large groups of people.