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How are objects, scents and memory connected? Find out from Prof. Elina Gertsman’s just-published “Housing Scent, Containing Sensorium,” now available online here! In this special issue of Medieval History Journal, dedicated to materiality in the medieval and early modern eras, Prof. Gertsman writes about extraordinary spice containers used in Jewish home liturgy, teasing out their multisensory potential and exploring the many ways these object elicited cognitive, affective, and physiological engagement with their users. Stay tuned for the next year’s publication of Prof. Gertsman’s guest-edited issue of Convivium dedicated to intertwinement between image and scent in the global Middle Ages, which will feature essays by our very own Sonya Rhie Mace and Reed O’Mara.

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Fantastic Beasts: Cosmic Zoo after K’zoo

Cosmic Ecologies: Animalities in Premodern Jewish Culture, an international symposium co-sponsored by Case Western Reserve University, the Newberry Library, and the Northwestern University, took place in Chicago last week. Monday sessions–“Beastly Hybrids,” “Animal Capacities,” and Mystic Fauna”–broached a broad variety of subjects, from animals in the Kabbalah to zoomorphic allegories to micrographic beasts to animal imagery in Hebrew and Yiddish manuscripts–with respondents providing contextual comparanda from medieval Christian and Islamic art. On Tuesday, audiences were treated to an extended session on bodies and animalities as well as to a manuscript / rare book study at the Newberry; the symposium concluded with a roundtable.  The joint program was robustly represented by Reed O'Mara, who gave a fabulous talk on the Ambrosian Tanakh; Prof. Elina Gertsman, who co-organized the symposium and gave closing remarks; and Cecily Hughes, Rebekkah Hart, Zoe Appleby, Claudia Haines, Sarah Frisbie, and Ariella Har-Even who were in the audience. Prof. Gertsman was delighted by a surprise visit from Roshi Ahmadian, her very first MA student at CWRU, who now lives and works in Chicago!

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Year-end message from Elina Gertsman, the Acting Chair of Art History and Art

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to oversee the department during this academic year. I think it is fair to say that we have flourished.

Our graduate students have garnered a plethora of awards and fellowships, both external and internal, local and international. They have also presented at a startling range of important conferences, published peer-reviewed articles, curated exhibitions, and took part in archaeological excavations. Our faculty have received a great set of grants and awards as well, have published in some of the flagship journals of the field, have organized high-profile national and international symposia, had curated current and upcoming exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Sears think[box], and had books come out with flagship academic and art presses.

In the meantime, our graduating BAs and MAs are heading to some of the best graduate programs in the US and Europe. It was wonderful to celebrate them at the graduation! We look forward to welcoming our new graduate cohort in August and are excited have a new colleague, Professor Ben Murphy, join us in the fall.

Please click below to read more and see photos from the graduation, the departmental party, and the grad awards ceremony.

I hope you have a fabulous summer—see you in August!

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Case Western Reserve University’s Art History Department and the Interactive Commons wowed at the Medieval Academy of America’s annual conference, held this year at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Elina Gertsman and Reed O’Mara organized a session on the use of immersive technologies in teaching, and in addition staged a HoloLens demonstration with the help of the incomparable Peter Gao and Karen Rhoad from the Interactive Commons. The demonstration focused on Prof. Gertsman’s Gothic Chapel and Prof. Elizabeth S. Bolman’s Red Monastery apps, while the session itself also included a presentation by Sonya Rhie Mace, the curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which discussed the uses of HoloLens at her recent Revealing Krishna show. Several PhD students and an undergraduate student traveled from CWRU to take part in the conference. It was a riveting show of what may result from the collaborative interdisciplinary projects between university units and between institutions, and with how much excitement these projects are welcomed by the broader academic world.

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Our Favorite Things with PhD Student Tess Artis!

Our Favorite Thing for today is the CMA’s Sculpture of Christ and Saint John the Evangelist (c. 1300)! 🦅Tess Artis is a first year doctoral student studying medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman.
 
“I love medieval devotional art because it was made to be loved. Today, we show our respect for this sculpture of Christ and Saint John the Evangelist (c. 1300) by preserving it behind a transparent barrier; we are close, yet removed. But we only need to look at the figures’ toes, some of which have been kissed, rubbed, and grabbed into obsolescence, to see that this object has been cherished more intimately.”

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Our Favorite Things with PhD Student Claudia Haines!

Our Favorite Thing for today is The Hours of Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (1963.256)! 📖 Claudia Haines is a first-year student in the Art History PhD program, studying medieval art under Professor Elina Gertsman.
 
“Books of hours are often deemed the ‘bestsellers’ of the Middle Ages: these often richly illustrated books contain the series of prayers recited by medieval Christians at various points throughout the day, and were so widely popular that thousands of examples survive to this day, including several now in the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. This fifteenth-century book of hours—the Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic—is a particularly luxurious example, and was made by a Flemish artist for the Queen of Spain. She likely would have used it as part of her private daily devotions.”

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PhD Students Reed O’Mara and Luke Hester Invited to Conference on Leadership in the Humanities

Fourth-year PhD candidate Reed O’Mara and first-year PhD student Luke Hester participated in the Humanities in Leadership Learning Series (HILLS) Graduate Symposium this past weekend along with six other CWRU graduate students from across the humanities and humanities-adjacent fields. Together, the group discussed pathways to academic and administrative leadership and how to implement positive change at the department and university levels. The symposium was coordinated and facilitated by Dr. Timothy Beal and Dr. Joy Bostic and featured a discussion led by the interim Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Lee Anne Thompson. Congrats to Reed and Luke for being selected to participate!

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Our Favorite Things with Rebekah Utian!

Our Favorite Thing for today is Convolvulus and Metamorphosis of the Convolvulus Hawk Moth by Maria Sibylla Merian (2019.9, not on view)! Rebekah Utian is a Master’s student studying Early Modern Art history with Dr. Erin Benay.

“My favorite object in the CMA collection is Maria Sibylla Merian’s Convolvulus and Metamorphosis of the Convolvulus Hawk Moth (c. 1670–83), which portrays the carefully observed life cycle of the European pink-spotted hawkmoth. I particularly love the languid, grayish-brown caterpillar in the center, who is clearly the protagonist of this naturalist narrative, sprawling across his favorite food, the flowering bindweed.”

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Our Favorite Things with Master’s Student Emme Page!

Our Favorite Thing for today is Jared French’s Evasion! 🪞 Emme Page just presented her qualifying paper today! She is an art history M.A. student in her final semester studying American art.

“Jared French’s Evasion stands out to me as a work in which the meaning is both clear and ambiguous, creating an interpretative tension parallel to his understanding of the inner self. As a bisexual man married to a woman in 1940s New York City, French explores themes of shame and ostracism through this image.”

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