John Webley

John Webley is a joint PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literature and History of Art. His dissertation is a transmedial examination of Russia’s engagement with Britain and India during the 19th-century, which reframes the role of literature, material culture, and art in negotiating the so-called “Great Game.” John’s dissertation research in Britain, Finland, France, and India was supported by the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture’s Graduate Scholar Research Grant, as well as a Russian Studies Dissertation Fellowship and a MacMillan Dissertation Fellowship from Yale. Parts of his dissertation have and will soon appear in print, including the chapter “The Orient Estranged: Vasilii Vereshchagin’s Blowing from Guns in British India” in Russian Orientalism in a Global Context (2023).

 

John holds a BA in Russian and Art History from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA from Columbia in Art History, where he wrote his thesis on the representation of jewelry in Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s royal portraits. He has interned and worked at numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dahesh Museum of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art, where he was the Graduate Research Assistant in Provenance for 2023-2024. During the summer of 2024 he will intern at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, where he will assist the department of European Decorative Arts in researching their collection of Russian art, focusing on pieces by Fabergé.