Carolin Greifenstein studied Art and Visual History and Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin (B.A.) and Art History in a Global Context with a focus on Europe and the Americas at Freie Universität Berlin (M.A.). Her research interests include postcolonial and posthumanist theory, feminist art history, and the role of art in the formation of community and identity.

Beginning in October 2025, she is a doctoral candidate in the History and Cultural Studies (HCS) program. She also works as Assistant Curator at SOMA Art Space, Berlin, and as a freelance writer and research assistant. Since 2022, she is a member of the editorial board of the student-led art journal re:visions.

My dissertation focuses on secular motifs—wild men, animals, and grotesque plant ornaments—in early fifteenth-century printmaking, especially copperplate prints produced in the Rhine region. I analyse these prints as visual objects at the intersection of aesthetic form, medial function, and cultural meaning. My central thesis is that these works contribute to the formation of premodern visual concepts of alterity. Methodologically, the study combines iconographic and formal analyses with approaches from visual culture studies as well as postcolonial theory.

I begin with an analysis of the aesthetic and compositional aspects of the prints, such as the structural integration of figures into plant ornaments and their spatial organisation. Likewise, I examine the reception and functional contexts of the prints: as widely distributed patterns, they not only transmitted their motifs into manuscript illumination and the decorative arts but also helped establish pictorial formulas that later reappear in proto-scientific representations of nature and in colonial images of non-European populations. The study aims to contribute to a broader understanding of premodern visuality and its role in the genesis of cultural systems of classification and order.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Karin Gludovatz