Associate Professor of Art History Shelley Zuraw has been named as one of five Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professors, the highest university recognition for excellence in instruction. She will be honored at the upcoming annual Faculty Recognition Banquet on April 1.

According to Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Libby V. Morris, whose office sponsors the award, “Our 2019 Meigs Professors represent a range of fields, but they share a commitment to engaging students and challenging them to apply their knowledge in creative and meaningful ways. They are exemplary educators at a university with a national reputation for offering students extraordinary learning experiences.”

Shelley Zuraw received her MA and PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she worked with John Pope-Hennessy. Zuraw joined the UGA faculty in 1993 and has designed and taught more than 30 courses in the history of Renaissance and Baroque art in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, including 15 writing intensive courses that help students learn and apply communication skills. There, between 1998 and 2008, she was both head of art history and Associate Director of the School of Art. 

Between 2007 and 2009 she was President of the Italian Art Society. Her research focuses on fifteenth-century sculpture, especially in Florence and Rome. She has published articles on the sculpture in the Palazzo Venezia, Mino da Fiesole’s tombs in the Florentine Badia, Mino’s Medici portraits, the fifteenth-century plans for the façade of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, the tomb of Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri in San Clemente, Rome, two quattrocento tombs in Rome for Cardinal Marco Barbo and Bishop Giovanni Francesco Brusati, Andrea Bregno and Michelangelo, and Vasari’s lives of the “little marble masters”.

In her former role as area chair for Art History and as associate director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, Zuraw revamped the school’s art history offerings. She previously held the title of Sandy Beaver Teaching Professor, which is bestowed on the top instructors in the Franklin College.

She is a member of the UGA Teaching Academy, earned a UGA Honors Program collaborative teaching grant and was named a Center for Teaching and Learning Senior Teaching Fellow.

The Meigs Professorship was established to underscore the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching, the value placed on the learning experiences of students and the centrality of instruction to the university’s mission. The award includes a permanent salary increase of $6,000 and a one-year discretionary fund of $1,000.

More information about the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorships is available here. 

For more information on the five 2019 Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professors please visit UGAToday.