Laura Gelfand, Ph.D.

Laura Gelfand is an Emeritus Professor of Art History at Utah State University and an Honorary Professor in the History of Art at the University of York. Informed by art historical methods, her research engages the vibrant, interdisciplinary world of animal studies with a particular focus on canids. After editing the volume Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Literature, and Culture (Brill, 2016), Gelfand spent 2018-19 as a Fulbright Scholar in the History of Art Department at the University of York where she conducted research on historical representations of wolves. Her essay, “The Wolf at the Door and the Dog at our Feet,” appeared in Home Cultures: Special Issue on Animals and Home in 2021, she contributed a chapter on “Human-Animal Interactions and Art,” to The Handbook on Human-Animal Interactions, Interventions and Anthrozoology (Routledge, 2023), and published “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: James McNeill Whistler, The White Girl, and the Animal(s) in Question” in Humanimalia in 2023. Together with Angela Bartram (Univ. of Derby), she co-edited and contributed to the collection Punk and the Animal: Ethos, Ethics and Aesthetics (Intellect Pub., 2026). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Gelfand now lives in York where her research centers on representations of dogs in British Art.