“Before taking this class, I always assumed art is for artists and only “they” know how to enjoy it. I was wrong. Oh so wrong. I know now that even when you aren’t looking, art is being made for you, by people like you, for people like you. You just need to look. This amazing class of yours has taught me to look for light in all the darkness simply because for me, art brings color to a rather black and white perspective I’ve adopted over time. I’m very happy to have been able to experience your joyful teaching technique and borrow passion from you and your lessons. Thank you, Diane Zuliani, for introducing me to the art world. I think I’ll stay here for a while.” - Moses Teixeira
Meet the Faculty
Cynthia Brannvall, Art History
Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and award-winning multi-media artist. She teaches at several Bay
Area institutions, including Chabot College, where she is also a member of the Public
Art Committee, which she joined out of her belief that Public Art is a site where
the intersections of art, culture, identity, and belonging are forged together. In
her research, Cynthia’s emphasis is Modern and Contemporary art with attention to
post-colonial concerns.
In her artwork, she explores identity formation envisioned in an imagined “deep time” terrain of memory, reclamation, and the geographies of forced and voluntary migrations. Her artwork has been selected in juried group exhibitions in Berkeley, San Francisco, San Rafael, Palo Alto, San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles.
Cheyanne Cortez, Art History
Cheyanne Cortez is an enthusiastic art history instructor teaching the survey of art and visual culture.
She has published with Routledge Press and presented her scholarship at several international conferences.
Ms. Cortez’s research centers around the effects of industrialization and consumerism in the development of cultural aesthetics and female identities in the United States, with an emphasis on the creation and promotion of the American Girl identity.
Amy Raymond, Art History
Amy Raymond is an art historian and archaeologist (LinkedIn and Academia). She enjoys being in the traditional and the virtual classroom where she works
to amplify equity, diversity, and inclusion with the support of the College Arts Association. Dr. Raymond holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Toronto,
a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. Summa Cum
Laude in Religion and Philosophy from Hendrix College.
She has presented papers internationally, published peer reviewed articles on her archaeological fieldwork in Greece and Turkey, and worked as Junior Curator in the Ancient Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Teaching at community colleges in the Bay Area since 2008, Dr. Raymond is dedicated to public education and engaging a diverse student body with innovative teaching. Her latest passion is digital pedagogy and her Ancient Art History course is under review by the California Virtual Campus Online Educational Initiative (CVC-OEI).
Diane Zuliani, Art History
Diane Zuliani is a twenty-year veteran of the art history program, and the recipient of the highest
honor given to faculty in the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District, the Reed
L. Buffington Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her courses range from surveys of
western and non-western art to museum studies to the history of photography and film.
She is well-known to students for her passion for the visual arts, and she ensured an artful campus for all by establishing a campus art gallery and guiding the college through a public art project that resulted in sixteen permanent artworks. In addition to working hard for her students and the campus, Diane is also active in the artworld.
She’s given recent presentations for the Crocker Art Museum, the Stanford Continuing Studies program, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, and she serves as a nominator of visual artists for the grant-giving Aninstantia Foundation. If you ask her who her favorite artist is, she’ll answer “whoever I’m teaching about today!”