Professor Maggie Popkin and doctoral candidates Madeline Newquist, Clara Pinchbeck, and Arielle Suskin attended the recent Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Chicago. Congratulations to Madeline, Clara, and Arielle, who each gave a superb and very well-received paper!
Throughout the Middle Ages, affluent women expressed their social and political power as well as their piety by commissioning luxurious art objects. Sam Truman, PhD student in medieval art, just published an article in the Getty’s News and Stories, where she explores images of these women in a broad variety of medieval manuscripts. Read it here!
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!
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.”