Charissa N. Terranova is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. She is currently writing a book-length manuscript on the automobile and perception. Under the working title "The Automotive Prosthetic", the book focuses on the aesthetic experience of seeing the world in motion through the car window and the global political economy of the car in the postwar period. The working draft includes six chapters on the following topics: conceptual photo-text works and mobile perception; Hummers and urban warfare, at home and abroad; cyborgs and the representation of prosthetic enhancement; automobile and road exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the post WW II period; the eroticism of the automobile; and automotive culture in film.

Dr. Terranova lectures and teaches seminars on media theory and art and architectural theory and history. She has published several catalogue essays on museum exhibitions, in The Journal of Transport History, Journal of Urban History, Senses and Society, the Dutch architecture journal Oase and in the Canadian journal Women & Environments International. She also is a regular contributor to the Texas art magazine Art Lies and the website for art in Texas, Glasstire.com. From 2004 to 2006 she was the art critic for the Dallas Observer and currently she writes criticism for the Dallas Morning News. Her criticism has also appeared in Art News and Sculpture Magazine.