Amy Werbel, PhD

Education

BA, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges
PhD, Yale University

2018-2019 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities

Biography

Amy Werbel’s areas of expertise include visual culture of the United States, public art, and civic engagement and education. She is the author of Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize of the Northeast Popular and American Culture Association.  Werbel's previous book publications also include Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007), which was designated an "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice Magazine. Professor Werbel has served as Faculty Senate President, and as a SUNY Civic Engagement and Education and Civil Discourse Fellow. She is currently co-chair of Public Art Dialogue.

Dr. Werbel is the past recipient of fellowships and scholarships from numerous institutions, including the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. She served as a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom (2019-2020), and in China (2011-2012). Her public scholarship includes contributions to The Hill, Inside Higher Ed, Scientific American, and The Conversation, as well as podcasts and documentary films.

Selected Publications

Books

Art and Censorship: A New History of Power and Pleasure (in development) 

Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (New York: Columbia University Press,  2018). Winner of the Peter C. Rollins Book Prize, Northeast Popular and American Culture Association.

Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World's Most Important Rising Generation (Self-published. Printed by CreateSpace, 2013). 

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title.

Public Scholarship

Speaker, Keynote Panel “Museum Superpowers and the Future of Democracy” Connecticut League of Museums' Annual Conference, (June 1, 2026).

“Censorship campaigns can have a way of backfiring – look no further than the fate of America’s most prolific censor.” The Conversation (September 30, 2025).

“Seizure of Sally Mann’s photographs in Texas revives old debates about obscenity and freedom of expression”  The Conversation (January 24, 2025).

“Disregard for Women’s Lives Explains the Comstock Act’s Origins. It Also Explains Its Revival Today” Scientific American (May 15, 2024).

“The Fragile Future of Artistic Expression on Campus” Inside Higher Ed (March 30, 2023)

co-author, with Jonathan Friedman, “The Comstock Law at 150: A Highly Relevant Cautionary Tale for Today” The Hill (March 3, 2023)

Fellows in the Field: Art and Porn on Campus, webinar with Lynn Comella, UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement (October 13, 2022).

Panelist, Restricted Access: An American History of Book Banning, New York Public Library / PEN America (September 21, 2022).

“Proposed federal abortion ban evokes 19th-century Comstock Act” The Conversation (September 19, 2022).

Study of Freedom of Artistic Expression in Academic Art Museums and Galleries, University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement (June, 2022).

Recent Academic Publications

“Anthony Comstock and the Rise (and Fall) of Obscenity Publications Prosecution,” in: Jen Manion and Nick Syrett, eds., The Cambridge History of Sexuality in the United States, vol. II, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2027).

“Anthony Comstock’s 1906 Raid on the Art Students League of New York,” in: 150 Stories: The Art Students League 150th Anniversary (Art Students League, 2025).        

“The Influence of Art Censorship on New York Collectors in the Gilded Age,” Journal of the History of Collections (February, 2021) 

“John Haberle’s A Bachelor’s Drawer: Censorship, Geologic Time, and Truth,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 55 (Fall, 2020), 43-59.

Recent Academic Lectures

"From Sir Frederic Leighton to Banksy: Censorship’s Perverse Consequences," Sorbonne Université (June 5, 2024)

“Anthony Comstock in Historical Perspective,” ComstockCon, Initiative for a Representative First Amendment at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University (May 14, 2024). 

"Drawing Histories: Contemporary Perspectives on Practice" National Academy of Design (panel participant, September 19, 2023)

“Censorship, Social Control, and the Nude in 19th C. Britain vs. the United States,” University of York, Department of the History of Art Research Seminar, February 27, 2020.

“Art in the Age of Social Media” with Mikaela Gross and Irina Tarsis, Center for Art Law Lunch Talk, July 29, 2020.

Recent Professional Leadership

Planning Grant Co-Director, “Garments and Government,” The Teagle Foundation (Summer, 2026) 

Project Co-Investigator, Creative Spaces/Contested Spaces: Reinterpreting Italian American Public Art in New York City Landmarks of American History and Culture Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities, with Rebecca Bauman and Daniel Levinson-Wilk (June, 2024)

Co-Moderator, Art Censorships on Campus, College Art Association Session, with Andrew Wasserman (February 15, 2023)

Scholarly Advisor, Flashpoints: Free Speech in American History, Culture & Society, 2022-2023 event series organized by PEN America and the American Historical Association

Book Review Editor, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, 2020-2023

Peer Reviewer, Institute for International Exchange, U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission, and China-U.S. Scholars Program, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021

Film / Video

Commentator, “Empire City: The Moral Crusade” Crooked Media Podcast (2024) 

Commentator, “Empires of Excess: The Booze, Bets, and Sex that Built America,” The History Channel (released 2024). 

Commentator, “Seen and Obscene” Borrowed and Banned Podcast Brooklyn Public Library (2023). 

Commentator, Long Shots Podcast “Victoria Woodhull” (May, 2020)                                

Advisor and Commentator, Exposing Muybridge, produced by Marc Shaffer (filmed June 10, 2019)

Commentator, Ipse Dixit Podcast, Amy Werbel on Anthony Comstock and Obscenity Law (April 24, 2019) 

Commentator, American Bar Association Journal, Modern Law Library Podcast, “How Anthony Comstock’s Anti-Obscenity Crusade Changed American Law” (June 6, 2018)

Commentator, “So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast. “Anthony Comstock and the Role of Artists in the Emergence of American Free Speech Rights” (May 3, 2018)

Courses

• HA 219 African American Art
• HA 231 Modern Art in Europe and North America
• HA 245 Art of the United States
• HA 246 Art and Social Justice in New York