“Westward the Star of Empire”: California Grapes and Western Settlement in the Nineteenth Century

Shana Klein holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of New Mexico, where she completed the dissertation, “The Fruits of Empire: Contextualizing Food in Post-Civil War American Art and Culture.” This project, now under advance contract to become a book, probes how the representation and cultivation of food participated in the broader cultivation of American empire. Klein has been awarded several fellowships for her research, including one at the German Historical Institute in partnership with Georgetown University.