Elizabeth S. Bolman
Elizabeth S. Bolman is Chair of the Department of Art History and Art, and Elsie B. Smith Chair in the Liberal Arts. She engages with the visual culture of the eastern Mediterranean in the late ancient and Byzantine periods. Professor Bolman is best known for her work in Egypt, in which she has demonstrated the vitality of Christian Egyptian art and a new understanding of the nature of artistic production there in the early Byzantine period. She edited and was the principal contributor to the award-winning Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea (Yale University Press and the American Research Center in Egypt, 2002) and to The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt (Yale University Press and the American Research Center in Egypt, 2016). This recent book is the product of over a decade-long multidisciplinary project that she founded and directed, which included cleaning and conservation of the Red Monastery’s spectacular paintings. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright program, National Endowment for the Humanities, Dumbarton Oaks, American Research Center in Egypt, and United States Agency for International Development.
Recent Department News
Ph.D. Candidate | Dept. of Art History and Art, Arielle Suskin
Coin exhibition CWRU news article
Lauren Lovings-Gomez
Lauren Lovings-Gomez: "My dissertation is titled "Materiality, Innovation, and Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century Britain" and reconsiders women artists in nineteenth-century Britain by centering materiality as a critical framework for understanding their innovation, agency, and contributions to visual culture. Through a materially grounded, feminist approach, I argue that these artists...
Reed O'Mara, a doctoral candidate in medieval art, is the featured researcher of the week on the Medieval Jewish Studies Now! --- a news blog dedicated to providing current information on the developing state of medieval Jewish studies research. We seek to update our readers on Jewish studies research spanning the...
Faculty Work-in-Progress: Belkis Ayon’s Media Archaeology
https://case.edu/artsci/bakernord/events/upcoming-events/faculty-work-progress-belkis-ayons-media-archaeology
MAA 2026 — A CWRU Coup!
The 2026 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America was quite the convivium for current and past Case Western Reserve University medievalists! Hosted by the Five College Consortium, the conference took place on the campuses of Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst on March 19-21, 2026. Dominique...
PhD candidate Anthony Huffman has been appointed the sixth annual Keithley Fellow in Community-Engaged Art History! Tony will complete his fellowship at Zygote Press—Cleveland’s oldest collaborative printmaking studio and gallery. Working in their newly expanded gallery spaces, Tony will collaborate with Ohio artists and Zygote staff on projects related...
Congratulations to Alli Boroff and Rachel Sweeney who each received the 2026 Flora Stone Mather Center for Women Research and Professional Development Grant! The grant will support Rachel's Rachel's dissertation project, “Anseo tá Arrachtaigh: The Christian Function of Monstrous and Grotesque Imagery in Pictland and Ireland, c. 700-1200,” and...
