Full-Time Faculty

Sohnya Sayres is Associate Professor of Humanities at the Cooper Union and holds a B.A., M.A.H. and a Ph.D. from the State University at Buffalo. She writes and lectures on contemporary cultural issues, ecology, technology, and the environment. She also writes fiction and poetry. She is a founding editor of the journal Social Text. Her books include Susan Sontag: the Elegiac Modernist and, as co-editor, the anthology The 60's Without Apologies. One of her present projects includes a study of the cultural history of the 1970s. 

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About

Ph.D., Chemistry 2005
Yale University
Research Advisors: Prof. David J. Austin and Prof. Donald M. Crothers
Dissertation: “Synthetic and Biophysical Efforts Toward an Understanding of RNA Structure”

M.S., Chemistry 2000
Yale University

B.E., Chemical Engineering 1998
The Cooper Union
Summa Cum Laude Graduate

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Lex Lancaster
Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art

Lex Lancaster (they/them/theirs) is an art historian and curator specializing in contemporary queer and trans art practices and theories. Their research focuses on the politics of abstraction in contemporary art, and they recently published the first monograph on the topic of queer abstraction: Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2022). Their scholarship considers how formal and material strategies in art can also produce queer, trans, anti-racist, and crip political tactics. Lancaster has published articles related to queer and trans abstraction in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, ASAP/Journal, and Texte Zur Kunst. They are also included in the Journal of Visual Culture roundtable: "Trans Visibility and Trans Viability." Lancaster holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

See Lex Lancaster's website: https://www.lexmorganlancaster.com/ 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.