Overview
Clayton Beasley is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art: Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. He earned an M.A. in Liberal Studies with a focus in Zoo Studies (2025) and a B.S.I. in Animal Science (2023) from Coastal Carolina University.
His research examines how nonhuman animals and agricultural practices shaped multispecies authorship and regional identity in the nineteenth‑century American South. He is particularly interested in how ideals of nonhuman animal bodies were produced through breeding, visual culture, and systems of agricultural knowledge, and how these processes shaped both human and nonhuman lives. More broadly, he studies the aesthetic domestication of nonhuman animals, including the selective breeding of livestock, companion, and ornamental species, analyzing how color, form, and other desirable traits have been cultivated through human visual preferences and practices of authorship.
His interests include the intersection of art and agricultural history; America in the world; the global development of zoological gardens; zoological and agricultural architecture; animal production and management practices; connoisseurship, viewership, and authorship; multispecies performance; and questions of nonhuman agency.
At Duke, he is also pursuing certifications in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, as well as College Teaching.
Office Hours
I am the Graduate Assistant for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program in the Office of University Scholars and Fellows. If you are applying for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and would like advising, please schedule a meeting with me through my Calendly link.