Walter R. Brown

Associate Professor

Assistant Chair of the Department
Undergraduate Coordinator

201-B Mitchell

901.678.3393 901.678.2720

Ph.D., History, Emory University, 1973 (Dissertation: French Provincial Opinions at the Time of the Fronde, under J. Russell Major)

Fields of Interest

Early Modern European History; Cultural and Social History, Material Culture, History of the Decorative Arts; France and England

The focus of my research is the history of the decorative arts and material culture in England and Europe 1500-1800 and in the United States to approximately 1830, with a special emphasis on furniture and other objects of domestic life. The principal outlet for my scholarship has been museum exhibitions, installations, and acquisitions, largely at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, where I have served as Adjunct Curator of the Decorative Arts for over twenty years.

Courses taught

Undergraduate survey of early modern Europe; mixed undergraduate/graduate courses on the Age of the Baroque and the Old Regime and French Revolution; graduate colloquia that traditionally address a different theme each time taught, and often cut across the boundaries of early modern European social, cultural, intellectual, and political history.

Representative publications

The Stuart Legacy: English Art 1603-1714 (University of Washington Press, 1991)

Representative museum exhibitions

Decorated Furniture (1981)
Regional Distinctions in Furniture 1600-1850 (1984)
On the Surface: Table-top Furniture 1450-1850 (1990)
The Stuart Legacy: English Art 1603-1714 (Birmingham Museum of Art, 1991)
So Proudly We Hail: American Furniture 1680-1820(1993)
English and American Silver 1720-1910: The Enlightened Years (2001/2)
The Glory of Georgian England (2004)