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 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. Prior to enrolling at Yale, John worked as a Curatorial Associate at the Dahesh Museum of Art, where he assisted in cataloguing their permanent collection of Academic art. John was a 2019 recipient of the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace at Middlebury College and a 2020-21 Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum Fellow on the Arts and Culture Group. More recently, he has received the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture’s Graduate Scholar Research Grant as well as funding from the MacMillan Center to support his dissertation research.