“Before taking this class, I always assumed art is for artists and only “they” know how to enjoy it. I was wrong. Oh so wrong. I know now that even when you aren’t looking, art is being made for you, by people like you, for people like you. You just need to look. This amazing class of yours has taught me to look for light in all the darkness simply because for me, art brings color to a rather black and white perspective I’ve adopted over time. I’m very happy to have been able to experience your joyful teaching technique and borrow passion from you and your lessons. Thank you, Diane Zuliani, for introducing me to the art world. I think I’ll stay here for a while.”
--Moses Teixeira
Meet the Faculty
Cynthia Brannvall
Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and award-winning multi-media artist. She teaches at several
Bay Area institutions, including Chabot College, where she is also a member of the
Public Art Committee, which she joined out of her belief that Public Art is a site
where the intersections of art, culture, identity, and belonging are forged together.
In her research, Cynthia’s emphasis is Modern and Contemporary art with attention
to post-colonial concerns. In her artwork, she explores identity formation envisioned
in an imagined “deep time” terrain of memory, reclamation, and the geographies of
forced and voluntary migrations. Her artwork has been selected in juried group exhibitions
in Berkeley, San Francisco, San Rafael, Palo Alto, San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles.
www.cynthiabrannvall.com
Cheyanne Cortez
Cheyanne Cortez is an enthusiastic art history instructor teaching the survey of art and visual culture.
She has published with Routledge Press and presented her scholarship at several international
conferences. Ms. Cortez’s research centers around the effects of industrialization
and consumerism in the development of cultural aesthetics and female identities in
the United States, with an emphasis on the creation and promotion of the American
Girl identity.
Amy Raymond
Amy Raymond is an art historian and archaeologist who enjoys being in both the traditional
and the virtual classroom. With a Ph.D. and M.A. in Art History from the University
of Toronto, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A.
Summa Cum Laude in Religion and Philosophy from Hendrix College, Dr. Raymond has presented
papers internationally, published articles on her archaeological fieldwork in Greece
and Turkey, and worked in the Ancient Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Teaching at community colleges in the Bay Area since 2008, Dr. Raymond is dedicated
to public education and engaging a diverse student body with innovative teaching.
Her latest passion is digital pedagogy and her Ancient Art History course was recently
accepted onto the California Virtual Campus Online Educational Initiative (CVC-OEI).
Diane Zuliani
Diane Zuliani is a twenty-year veteran of the art history program, and the recipient of the highest honor given to faculty in the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, the Reed L. Buffington Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her courses range from surveys of western and non-western art to museum studies to the history of photography and film. She is well-known to students for her passion for the visual arts, and she ensured an artful campus for all by establishing a campus art gallery and guiding the college through a public art project that resulted in sixteen permanent artworks. In addition to working hard for her students and the campus, Diane is also active in the artworld. She’s given recent presentations for the Crocker Art Museum, the Stanford Continuing Studies program, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, and she serves as a nominator of visual artists for the grant-giving Aninstantia Foundation. If you ask her who her favorite artist is, she’ll answer “whoever I’m teaching about today!”