Associate Professor of Art History, Chief Academic Adviser, Department of Art and Art History, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
Claude Baillargeon is associate professor of art history at Oakland University (Rochester, MI). He holds an MFA in photographic practice from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1988), an MA in modern art history, theory, and criticism (SAIC, 1989), and a PhD in the history of photography from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2002).
Baillargeon has taught at Ryerson and York universities in Toronto (1997–2002 and 2000–2002 respectively) and served as a curatorial assistant with the Photographs Collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal (1989–93).
Active as an historian and curator, his research interests include civil engineering and architectural photography, Haussmannization, environmental art, cultural identity, and representations of the nuclear experience from a global visual perspective.
For the Oakland University Art Gallery, he has curated four international exhibitions, all with catalogues: Shadows of the Invisible (2014); Revolutionizing Cultural Identity: Photography and the Changing Face of Immigration (2008), which travelled to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, NS (2011); Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate (2005), which was shown in five venues, including the National Gallery of Canada (2008); and Dickensian London and the Photographic Imagination (2003) organized on the occasion of the Eighth Annual Dickens Society Symposium.
The author of many articles, book reviews, and catalogue essays, Baillargeon currently serves as a board member for the Society for Photographic Education, the leading professional organization in the field.