Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester, NY
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Art, San Francisco State University, CA
Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies, The Evergreen State College, WA

Dore Bowen is associate professor of modern and contemporary art history at San José State University. Her research, theoretical essays, and curatorial exhibitions interrogate the media image as a cultural practice that is in dialogue with discursive structures of knowledge. Her Ph.D. dissertation was a phenomenological analysis of Fluxus—the postwar collective—and focused on the various ways in which the collective's performative and instruction-oriented practices challenge conventional notions of the technological image. In 2003 she co-curated the noted exhibition "Agitate: Negotiating the Photographic Process" at SF Camerawork and in 2005 she engaged in a two-year curatorial project titled "Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women" (in French, "Soit dit en passant"). This project, in alliance with the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, brought together a host of topics including the transformation of the photographic archive into the digital database, the phenomenology of cross-cultural perception, oral versus archival history, and gender as its relates to key-words. Her research resulted in a sound and image exhibition that was curated with French artist Isabelle Massu and mounted at La Compagnie Contemporary Art Center in Marseille in 2005-06, traveling to SF Camerawork in 2007. In addition, she edited an accompanying special-issue of Camerawork Journal titled "Not Given: Troubling Gender in the Archive" that included her curatorial essay and related texts by Arlette Farge, Tarek el-Ariss, and Paul-Emmanuel Odin. In 2008 she embarked upon a curatorial project titled "Early Man on a Modern Road" that altered the sculptural, visual, and narrative forms used by the Musée de Préhistoire des Gorges du Verdon in France in order to reconsider the story of human evolution. A semester research residency at the museum resulted in a four-part installation that worked with the museographical elements already in situ—such as the audio-guide, architecture, diorama, and archeological site. On display in 2009-10, the installation was designed and constructed with artists Isabelle Gressier and Isabelle Massu.

Bowen's criticism and catalog essays have appeared in numerous journals including Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Art Papers, Stretcher Journal, and Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts.Her theoretical essays include “Imagine There’s No Image (It’s Easy If You Try): Appropriation in the Age of Digital Reproduction” in The Companion to Art History Since 1945, edited by Amelia Jones, and “Sacred Cow, Sacred Text: Allegories of the Spectacle in BLW's Re-Speaking Project” in Adaptation Theories (forthcoming from Jan van Eyck Press). She is currently working on a book project concerning contemporary media and performance artists that engage with notions of “the spectacle.” Bowen has received grants and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, the Getty Research Library, the College Art Association, the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, the Photography Institute, and the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies.