SHORT BIO︎︎︎Frances Cathryn is a writer and editor who combines archival research, media theory, and social design to recontextualize American cultural narratives.

For a copy of her current CV, PDFs of papers or talks, or for questions and collaborations, email Frances or follow her on social media. If you are interested in mentoring or editorial advice, please reach out.

email: frances.wip@gmail.com
instagram: @francescathryn
pronouns: she/her/hers

AREAS OF RESEARCH︎︎︎Collective memory and public history, digital humanities, media theory and criticism, United States imperialism, Indigenous epistemology and anti-colonial methodologies, histories of settlement and land privatization, architectural preservation, social design, American society and culture, monuments and memorials, cultural belongings and material redress, historiography, museums, and archives

EDUCATION︎︎︎M.A. (modern and contemporary English literature), University of Virginia
B.A. (literature and liberal studies), University of Wisconsin–Madison

ABOUT︎︎︎Frances writes cultural criticism on topics ranging from the myth of American exceptionalism to marginalized historical landscapes for such publications as Frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ARTnews, the Brooklyn Rail, and Social Text journal. She has presented her work on memorial museums, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Kang’s concept of refusing research, and coloniality in mass media at the Yale School of Art, MASS MoCA, NYU ITP, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, among others.

Frances has worked in media, history museums, and arts organizations for more than a decade. In 2021–22, she was part of New Inc. at the New Museum, working in the Future Memory track to develop an online archival project that challenges western intellectual traditions in cultural institutions. Frances currently manages editorial projects at Forge Project, a Native-led arts initiative working to upend political and social systems formed through generations of settler colonialism, where she coordinates publications, advises writers-in-residence, authors a monthly newsletter, and in 2023 will launch a digital-first journal, Forging.

In her curatorial debut, In the Room, on view from June 10 to August 12, 2023, at CPW Kingston, Frances has brought together three photo-based artists whose works exploit the medium of photography to challenge the ways we document and remember. Through the critical interventions by Kelly Kristin Jones, Jonathan Mark Jackson, and Ashley M. Freeby, we can better understand how photographs function as social objects that perpetuate the power held by the people who made them.

Frances is of German settler descent from southern Wisconsin on Hoocągra land, and currently resides in Kingston, New York, the unceded lands and territories of the Lenapeyok and the Muhheconneok.

Writing Sample 2 ︎︎︎ The Brooklyn Rail

Writing Sample 3 ︎︎︎ Monument Lab