Karl Sandin has been a member of the Denison University faculty since 1989, serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History & Visual Culture and teaching courses in the Sustainability & Environmental Studies Program. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Rutgers University in Art and Architectural History.
Sandin’s scholarship has focused on visual culture in the urban environment. Broadly trained at Rutgers in ancient, medieval, and early modern art and architectural history, his Ph.D. dissertation investigated how Middle Byzantine processional crosses impacted urban and liturgical spaces in the medieval east Mediterranean. At Denison, Sandin went on to explore how images circulate within the built environment and natural landscapes to produce knowledge, power, and social meaning. His teaching spans the ancient Mediterranean through the European medieval and early modern periods, incorporating themes of trade, slavery, environmental transformation, and colonial expansion.
Sandin has taught innovative seminars such as “Waste Spaces, Imaginations, Innovations” within the Visual Arts department. Others include “Sustainable Urbanism and Death on a Pale Horse in the Italian City-State: Environment, Image, and City During the Era of the Black Death” in the Sustainability & Environmental Studies major, and “Seeable, Sensible, Sayable: The Right to Look and Writing Visual Culture in the Public Sphere,” which emphasized critical theory and visual inquiry in Art History & Visual Culture.
In addition to his departmental contributions, Sandin has co-led student study trips to Greece and served as a leader for the Denison Outdoor Orientation program. He has been active in the Writing Program and the Sustainability and Environmental Studies Program Committee, fostering interdisciplinary connections across campus. His research came to include studies of the urban history of Newark, Ohio, and its topography of homelessness. Sandin also directed Newark’s East Main Street Urban Visioning Project of 2006-2008 in collaboration with the Neighborhood Design Center of Columbus, Ohio. His ongoing research interests include intersections of landscape and infrastructure, with a particular fascination in North American alleyways and interstitial urban spaces.
As he approaches retirement after more than three decades at Denison, Sandin is recognized for his thoughtful scholarship and academic exploration, and his ability to guide students in connecting historical and contemporary visual culture to broader social, environmental, and ethical questions.