History of photography, material culture, performance studies
Jesse studies twentieth-century American photography, with particular interest in documentary and vernacular practices. Using frameworks of material culture and performance studies, Jesse is concerned with how the material culture of photography both scripts and expresses performances of identity. Her dissertation will consider student and collaborative documentary photography practices in Maine and Appalachia in the 1970s. As an undergraduate, Jesse studied American studies and photographic practice at Colby College. Her undergraduate thesis looked at shifting conceptions of social class in the Reagan eighties through an analysis of the independent films of Whit Stillman. Jesse’s writing has appeared most recently in the 2021 10×10 Photobooks anthology What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843 – 1999.