Congratulations to our very own Dr. Justin Willson, who was just awarded the 2023 Emerging Scholar Prize by the Society for Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art & Architecture (SHERA) for his article “On the Aesthetic of Diagrams in Byzantine Art,” which was published in Speculum in July. The judges called the article “a tour de force, drawing on an impressive command of multiple languages, theological traditions, texts, and images.’”
Congratulations to Jillian Kruse and Reed O’Mara on successfully defending their dissertation prospectuses! Jillian’s dissertation, “Printing Utopia: Experimentation, Collaboration, and Anarchy in the Prints of Camille Pissarro,” will explore the intersections of Pissarro’s experimental and collaborative printmaking practice with his anarchist subject matter and philosophy. Through her research, Jillian plans to demonstrate that the artist’s prints served as sites in which he combined process, technique, and motif to create his own anarchist utopia founded in artistic freedom, collaboration, and a love of the earth. Reed’s dissertation, “Materializing Sacred Language: Picturing and Performing Hebrew in Late Medieval Art,” will consider text and image relationships in Jewish illuminated manuscripts and Christian prints from Ashkenaz and Italy, ca. 1200-1500. In particular, Reed will examine how word play, visual punning, pseudo-texts, and other visual-verbal mechanics contributed to the complicated status of Hebrew in the Middle Ages both within and beyond Jewish communities.
This year’s Mellon Collections Seminar, taught by Prof. Elina Gertsman (CWRU) and Dr. Gerhard Lutz (CMA), has been featured in the Case Western Reserve University College Bulletin! The profile highlighted the visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), where students toured the museum’s medieval art galleries and were treated to a visit from the DIA’s curator of medieval arts, Chassica Kirchhoff. The course is keyed to the installation Elina and Gerhard are co-curating, scheduled to open at the CMA in Aug. 2024. Students are producing a robust gallery guide and a series of labels for the show, which will comprise a broad range of objects from the global Middle Ages. Click below for more info and photos!
Our medievalists had so much fun at the Graduate Association of Medieval Studies book club event this October! We read Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, a swashbuckling story of two unlikely friends set in about 1000 CE. Thanks to all who came to take part in our lively discussion!