Del Holton’s dissertation reevaluates the twentieth century visual archive of the US South through the region’s entanglement with American militarism in Asia. Examining aesthetic materializations of pacification across these geographies, the project traces the development of liberal counterinsurgency, and its attendant racial and spatial logics, within intertwined reconfigurations of plantation hegemony and transpacific empire.

Del Holton is a writer, curator, and filmmaker. Currently, they are a PhD candidate at Stanford University in art history and film & media studies. Their research explores art’s relation to political struggle. Holton’s dissertation has been supported by the Luce Foundation/ACLS and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their writing appears in Film Quarterly, Frontiers, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Brooklyn Rail, Screen Slate, and elsewhere. They have contributed to programs and exhibitions at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Center for Asian American Media, and the Berkeley Art Museum, among others.