Michael D. Carrasco Named Associate Dean, FSU College of Fine Arts
The College of Fine Arts is pleased to announce Dr. Michael Carrasco has been appointed Associate Dean effective August 7, 2020. Carrasco will serve as an integral member of the College of Fine Arts Leadership Team, working collaboratively with Dean James Frazier, Senior Associate Dean Scott Shamp and departmental chairs. As Associate Dean, he will oversee accreditation and University program review processes, provide vision and oversight for academic programs and accreditations for the College, and be responsible for improving academic quality, expanding programmatic options, and evaluating course curriculum.
I am very pleased that Michael Carrasco, PhD has agreed to join the CFA administration as an associate dean. Dr. Carrasco is an active scholar/researcher and a tenured faculty member in Art History, with years of service to the institution already under his belt. His intellect and compassion, commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and knowledge of the College and University, will support a smooth transition into this new role and provide much needed administrative support for the College. I look forward to working with Michael and I am excited about the ways that he will help us continue to build for the future.
– James Frazier, Dean
Dr. Michael D. Carrasco joined the faculty in the Department of Art History in 2007. Since then, he has served as the founding director of the Master’s degree program in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies and developed the Visual Cultures of the Americas area of study. Prior to his time at FSU, Carrasco taught at the University of Cincinnati and at Wesleyan University, where he was the Luther Gregg Visiting Scholar in Art History. He received his PhD and MA from the University of Texas at Austin in Art History and BA in Archaeology from Wesleyan University. He is co-Director of the Mesoamerican Corpus of Formative Period Art and Writing project.
I am excited to join the Dean’s office and work to advance the goals of the College in this challenging time and into the future. I look forward to working closely with all of the departments and programs in the CFA, to identify and highlight our shared academic goals as well as celebrate the unique features that create excellence within each of the College’s programs.
The visual cultures of the Americas, particularly the Maya and Formative period Gulf Coast, are at the center of Carrasco’s research. His scholarship and teaching draw on diverse, interdisciplinary perspectives—including poetics, iconography, ecology, ritual, historical linguistics, and image theory, among others—to elucidate the origins of writing in the Americas and examine indigenous aesthetics, theology, and epistemologies. Over the last decade his research and teaching have expanded to encompass a broader range of topics including indigenous heritage, digital humanities, and the dynamic interaction between folk traditions and the global art system.
Carrasco has received numerous internal and external grants, including ones from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), and the Japan Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR).
The fruits of his scholarship have appeared in numerous journal publications, as well as the edited volumes Under the Shade of Thipaak: Cycads, Humans, and Maize in Mesoamerican Ethnoecological and Agroecological Systems (University Press of Florida, 2021), Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica (University Press of Colorado, 2019), Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial, and Classic Maya Literature (University Press of Colorado, 2012), and Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica (Springer, 2010). He was co-curator with Paul Niell and Lesley A. Wolff of the exhibition Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié (Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, February 16-April 1, 2018).
For more information on the FSU College of Fine Arts, visit cfa.fsu.edu.