Clarissa Chevalier


...is an environmental media theorist, curator, and PhD Candidate at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She explores oceanography through the lens of feminist science and technology studies. At UCSD, she is jointly affiliated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Visual Arts Department. Chevalier’s work intersects technical image studies, oceanography, anticolonial and intersectional feminist theory, art/science collaboration, environmental media studies, and blue humanities approaches.

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Education


2021 – PRESENT
PhD Candidate, Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research, and Art History, Theory and Criticism. Visual Arts Department, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography

2018 – 2020
M.A., Art History, research concentration in feminist ecological art
Savannah College of Art and Design

2014 – 2018
B.A., Cinema Arts with Minor in Art History
Columbia College Chicago
 


Selected Curatorial and Museum Work

Claudine Arendt, Through a Porcelain Cast, 2024.


2024
Curator, Embodied Pacific: Through a Porcelain Cast. Geisel Library, UCSD.
Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide
2024
Co-Curator with Lisa Cartwright, Embodied Pacific: Seaways. The Visual Arts Gallery at SME, UCSD.
Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide

2019
Archival Researcher, SCAD Museum of Art
Savannah College of Art and Design



Selected Publications


2026 (forthcoming)
Clarissa Chevalier and Dante Capone. “Between Tactile and Digital: Zooplankton, Visual Science Studies, and the Automation of Oceanographic Observation.”
In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Bloomsbury Press.
2026 (forthcoming)
Clarissa Chevalier. “Clay as Technical Medium: Claudine Arendt’s Through a Porcelain Cast.
In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Bloomsbury Press.
2026 (forthcoming)
Clarissa Chevalier. “The Ocean is Not a Machine: A Feminist Media Analysis of Oceanographic Models, Simulations, and Futures.”
In World Futures Review SI: Environmental Futures: Media, Literary, and Narrative Approaches

2025
Review: “Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media by Alberlardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka.”
In Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology

2022
Clarissa Chevalier. “Agnes Denes: Ecological Art and Cultural Sustainability.”
In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan Press.

2021
Clarissa Chevalier. “Eco-Phenomenology and the Maintenance of Eco Art: Agnes Denes’s A Forest for Australia.”

In The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. 
Clarissa in front of work featured in Seaways by Our Worlds (Kilma S. Lattin and Catherine Eng), 2024



Selected Public Speaking + Conferences


2026
Presenting Scholar, “Crafting Plankton Data: A Feminist Materialist Reframing of Oceanographic Representations Across Art and Science.” PhD Candidate Colloquium.
Visual Arts Department, UCSD

Conference Organizer, “Considering the Octopus Model: Graduate Symposium on Interdisciplinary Environmental Research.”
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

Panel Co-Organizer with Nick Silcox, “Articulating Hydrofutures: Water, Technology, and Power.” Society for the Social Studies of Science 2026 Conference.
Toronto, Canada

2025
Participating Scholar, Colby Summer Institute in the Environmental Humanities
Colby College, Maine


2024
Presenting Scholar, “Bio-Optical Oceanography, Ocean Simulacrum, and Posthuman Feminism. FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science, and Technology.
University of Windsor, Canada

Presenting Scholar, “Artifices of Power in a Simulated Sea.” Radical Entanglements 2024 Environmental Philosophy Conference.
University of North Texas


2023
Presenting Scholar, “Pulling Apart the Myth of Independent Scientific Genius with Feminism, Disability Studies, and Artistic Practice.” Society for the Social Studies of Science 2023 Conference.
Honolulu, Hawai’i

Invited Speaker, “Contemporary Art, Feminism, and Science History.” Superposition Fremont.
San Francisco, California


2022
Invited Speaker, “Ceramics, New Technologies, and Posthuman Feminism.” Design@Large Series: Soft Structures in Hard Times.
Design Lab, UCSD

Invited Speaker, “Getting into Grad School: What the Pros Know.” SCADextra series.
Savannah College of Art and Design

Presenting Scholar, “Posthuman Feminism: A Technical and Ecological Framework for Contemporary Art.” Society for the Social Studies of Science 2022 Conference
Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico

Presenting Scholar, “Posthuman Feminism: A Technological and Ecological Framework for Contemporary Art.” FEMeeting: Women in Art, Science, and Technology 2022 Conference.
Evora, Portugal

Participating Scholar, “Deep Ecology and the Cognitive Capitalocene,” Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art.

Brooklyn, New York
Clarissa presenting work on ceramics and oceanography at Saas-Fee Summer Institute, 2022



Selected Teaching


2025
Instructor of Record,  VIS101: Introduction to Urban Ecologies.

Instructor of Record: VIS103A: Shaping Science through Design.

Educational Materials Developer, The History of Art: A Global View, 1st and 2nd editions
UCSD Visual Arts Department


UCSD Visual Arts Department

Thames & Hudson


2022 – 2025
Graduate Writing Consultant
UCSD Teaching and Learning Commons


2021 – PRESENT
Teaching Assistant
   VIS102: Democratizing the City
   VIS85A: Media History
   VIS21A: Introduction to Global Indigenous Art History
   VIS103: Contemporary Architectures
   VIS30: Introduction to Speculative Design
   VIS127B: Arts of China
UCSD Visual Arts Department

Selected Awards


2025
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Scholar Award
UCSD

2024
Ships Oceanographic Research Fund, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
UCSD

2023
Russell Grant, Visual Arts Department
UCSD

2020
Faculty of Liberal Arts Outstanding Academic Achievement Award
Savannah College of Art and Design

2019
Harrison Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research
University of Alabama, Birmingham



Background Image: Jess Holz, Plankton Painting 4/27/24 #88, Halls Pond, chronomicrograph, 2024.