Dissertation Title: "Black Art in White Narratives: Early Afro-Brazilian Art History at the Crossroads of Science and Aesthetic
Advisor: Fabiola López-Durán
Lee's research delves into the reception of Black art in Brazil at a time of intense national modernization. Focusing on early Afro-Brazilian ritual objects and their accompanying publications, she examines how medically trained scholars such as Nina Rodrigues and Arthur Ramos instrumentalized Afro-diasporic art to validate their theories on race and eradicate “undesirable” traces of Black culture in the first half of the twentieth century.
More broadly, Lee is interested in Afro-Latin American art and the historiography of the reception of African art in Europe and the Americas.