About Us
Joan Saab
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Joan Saab is the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. As the chief academic officer, she is responsible for the academic mission of the University including the curriculum, research programs, academic budgets, and faculty development.
She previously served as the Susan B. Anthony Professor of Art History and executive vice provost of academic affairs at the University of Rochester as well as the interim dean of the faculty of Arts, Sciences, & Engineering. In her time at Rochester, Saab has also worked as director of the graduate program in Visual and Cultural Studies and chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Her accomplishments include funding from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Getty Research Center at UCLA, as well as a University of Rochester Provost’s Research Grant.
Her first book, For the Millions: American Art and Culture Between the Wars, was the inaugural volume in the “Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series,” published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her most recent book, Objects of Vision: Making Sense of What We See, is part of the “Studies in Sensory History Series” at Pennsylvania State University Press. She is the author of the interactive, digital book project Searching for Siqueiros, written on the digital publishing platform Scalar, and the lead editor for the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Visual Culture. She is currently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Tales From the Crypt: Vincent Price and American Visual Culture. She is a sought-after scholar and presenter for invited talks, symposia, and conferences.
Dr. Saab earned her undergraduate degree in English and art history from Tufts University, her master's in American Civilization with a concentration on material culture and museum studies from The George Washington University, and her Ph.D. in American Studies at New York University.
Provost Office Areas
Provost Office Team
Academic Affairs
Specialties:
- Public memory
- U.S. media history
- Race and representation
- Qualitative research methods
Specialties:
- Children's and Young Adult Literature
- Fairy Tales and Retellings
- Victorian Fiction
- Writing & Writing Pedagogy
- Assessment of Student Learning
- Learning from Student Feedback
Specialties:
- Student engagement
- Active learning
- Inclusive pedagogies
- Mid-career and advanced career faculty development
- Early Modern French literature
- Second-language acquisition
Career Development
Center for Global Engagement
Planning and Policy
Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement
Specialties:
- Arts Management
- Producing
- Community Engagement
- Lighting Design
Specialties:
- Medieval Europe, Medieval/Renaissance Italy
- Households, Family, and Gender in the Middle Ages
- Medieval Southern Italy and Sicily
- Medieval Frontiers
- The Crusades
Specialties:
- Experiential Education
- Emerging Technology
- Design Thinking
- Change Management
- Product Innovation
- Venture Creation
- GenAI
- UX/UI
- Digital Design
- Web Development
- SEO
- Lego Serious Play
- Grant Writing
- Fundraising
Specialties:
- Museum education
- Teaching with art objects in non-arts disciplines
- Curatorial practice in university museums
- Building museum collections to complement university curricula
- European and American art, 1750 to the present
- History painting and visual culture of the French Revolution
University Library
Weinstein Learning Center
