Four Fine Arts faculty members appointed to endowed chair positions

The College of Fine Arts has named four faculty members as the new holders of endowed chair positions in the college. Art History Professor Julia Guernsey now holds the Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professorship in Fine Arts, Musicology Professor Luisa Nardini holds the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Professorship in Music, Art History Professor Nassos Papalexandrou holds the David Bruton holds the Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History, and Music Theory Professor Eric Drott holds the Virginia L. Murchison Regents Professorship in Fine Arts.

Endowed chair positions honor some of the college’s most exceptional full professors and support high-level, distinguished academic and research activity for the holder. Faculty members who hold chair positions must sustain a high level of creative or scholarly accomplishment over many years, bringing national and international attention to the university and to their own profile. Chair holders must teach at an exemplary level of effectiveness, provide service to the department, college and university and be a leader in their field by building significant programs, mentoring junior faculty and providing strategic leadership to their department and college.

Department of Art and Art History

Julia Guernsey, Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professorship in Fine Arts

Professor Julia Guernsey joined the faculty in 2001, her research interests include an expertise in Pre-Columbian art with a focus on the Middle and Late Preclassic periods in ancient Mesoamerica (1000 BCE to 300 CE).

Guernsey has published three monographs: Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica: From Figurines to Monumental Sculpture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan-Style Art (University of Texas Press, 2006.) Her second book won the Hamilton Book Award in 2012.

Guernsey’s record in the classroom has earned her multiple teaching accolades, including the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2014, the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 2015 and admission to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2020.

“Professor Guernsey receives consistently strong course evaluations from students at all levels, most strikingly in large introductory courses that serve a wide variety of majors, as well as in innovative team-taught classes,” said Department of Art and Art History Chair Susan Rather. “She’s an exceptional advisor and advocate, who brought significant visibility to undergraduate art history research in UT’s Undergraduate Research Symposium and in the launch of an annual Art History Undergraduate Symposium.”

Nassos Papalexandrou, David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Art History

Professor Nassos Papalexandrou joined the faculty in 2002, and his research focuses on early Greek art (8th-7th c BCE) in the broader ancient Mediterranean context, and he’s published two monographs, Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder: Griffin Cauldrons in in the Preclassical Mediterranean (University of Texas Press, Austin 2021) and The Visual Poetics of Power: Warriors, Youths, and Tripods in Early Greece, Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, (Lexington Books, 2005), and co-edited Hephaistus on the Athenian Acropolis: Current Approaches in the Study of Artifacts made of Bronze and other Metals (American Institute of Archeology, 2023).

“Professor Papalexandrou is a scholar coming into his full powers, an outstanding teacher/mentor and one of the department’s most selfless and dependable citizens,” said Susan Rather. “He ranks among the most intellectually voracious members of the Art and Art History faculty, truly interested in everything. That makes him a particularly outstanding graduate teacher and mentor…”

Papalexandrou has been recognized with multiple teaching awards, including the 2024–25 President’s Associates Undergraduate Teaching Award, which celebrated his work innovating undergraduate curriculum.

Butler School of Music

Eric Drott, Virginia L. Murchison Regents Professorship in Fine Arts

Music Theory Professor Eric Drott joined the Butler School of Music faculty in 2004, and his research spans several subjects: contemporary music cultures, streaming music platforms, music and protest, genre theory, digital music and the political economy of music. In 2020, he received the Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal, the premiere international award recognizing outstanding scholarship in music.

He’s published two monographs: Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2023), which examines the economics of music streaming platforms, and Music and the Elusive Revolution: Cultural Politics and Political Culture in France, 1968–1981 (University of California Press, 2011). He also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music (Oxford University Press, 2025).

“Over the course his career, Professor Drott has produced widely read and impactful scholarship that spans topics such as post-war modernism, avant-garde and experimental composition, contemporary French musical life, music and protest and present-day streaming cultures and artificial intelligence,” said Butler School of Music Director Susan Thomas. “This diversity of topics and their accompanying methodological and theoretical frameworks has given his work remarkably wide-ranging impact across the subfields of academic music studies.”

Luisa Nardini, Marlene and Morton Meyerson Professorship in Music

Musicology Professor Luisa Nardini joined the faculty in the Butler School of Music in 2005, and her research focuses on medieval music with a specialization in Beneventan chants and other medieval music from Naples and southern Italy.

She has published two monographs, Chant, Hypertexts, and Prosulas: Retexting the Proper of the Mass in Beneventan Manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), which was nominated for the Early Music Award from the American Musicological Society, and Interlacing Traditions: Neo-Gregorian Mass Proper Chants in Beneventan Manuscripts (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto Press, 2016).

“Professor Nardini has been a leader in the field of medieval music studies in showcasing the role that digital humanities can play in the understanding, appreciation, and performance of medieval music,” said Susan Thomas. “Her high productivity and the quality of the resulting publications and intellectual outputs, her international impact and her innovative integration of multiple platforms and technologies for disseminating research on medieval music make her an excellent choice for this endowed chair position.”

Guernsey, Papalexandrou, Drott and Nardini are four of 10 holders of endowed chairs in the College of Fine Arts.