Rebekkah Hart is a third-year doctoral student studying late medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman. She received her MA in Art History from University of California, Riverside, where she studied late medieval alabaster sculpture. Rebekkah recently presented papers at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo and the ARDS Colloquium on Current Research in Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in Paris. Her first publication, “Powders and Plasters: Alabaster and the Curative Consumption of Holy Medieval Sculpture,” is slated to appear in the postprint volume of the Paris ARDS conference. Her research interests include the role of sensorial reception, performativity, and materiality in late medieval devotional imagery. She also finds herself drawn towards art historical and archeological approaches to medieval graffiti and the medical humanities. In 2023 she served as the co-chair for the 49th Annual Cleveland Symposium, “Surface Tension: Water, Waterways, and Art.”

Anthony Huffman is a first-year doctoral student studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American art with Professor Andrea Rager. His research interests include links between the history of the decorative, murals, ornamentation, and abstraction; craft traditions; notions of framing and perception; public art, architecture, and spatial politics; eco-criticism; and art theory and historiography. In varying discursive formats, he has probed these topics through exhibitions, catalogue texts, public programs, reviews, and critical essays. Anthony has published in several leading publications for modern and contemporary art, including Artforum, Art Monthly, and The Brooklyn Rail. He has presented at many interdisciplinary conferences, such as the annual conferences of the Midwest Art History Society and the Society for French Historical Studies. His scholarship has been supported through grants and residencies from the Knight Foundation, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Phi Beta Kappa, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Prior to Case, he worked as a researcher for Hauser & Wirth and served as Curator-in-Residence at Kunstraum Gallery in New York, where he organized Chronologies and Circumstances (2021) and Historiographical Interventions (2022). Anthony graduated cum laude from Centre College in 2014 with a BA in Government and holds an MA in Art History from CWRU.

Cecily Hughes is a third-year doctoral student studying with Professor Elina Gertsman. With an avid interest in Scandinavian medieval art, she is especially drawn to the wit and humor with which medieval makers imbued their objects. Recently, she has presented papers at the NLHF Medieval Animals Heritage Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK and at the Midwest Art History Society’s 50th Annual Conference in Chicago. Cecily served as the 2023-2024 president of the university’s Graduate Association of Medieval Studies, and this year she is honored to act as co-chair of the 50th Annual Cleveland Symposium, “Moments, Intervals, Epochs: Time in the Visual Arts.” Cecily holds an MFA in Contemporary Visual Culture from the University of Edinburgh. In 2022, she received her MA in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her previous work includes positions at Elms College in Chicopee, Massachusetts, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland. Cecily loves teaching and making medieval art accessible to all, adores dogs, enjoys swimming, and tolerates bad puns.

Alexandra Kaczenski is a sixth-year PhD candidate studying late medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman. Her research focuses on the medieval body and devotional practice, as well as on arts of the long nineteenth century. Alex is currently a Curatorial Assistant at the Norton Simon Museum assisting with the publication of their Northern European Paintings Catalogue and co-curating a forthcoming exhibition. Last year she served as their Curatorial Intern in 2022-2023, during which she curated the exhibition Word as Image. Previously, she was the Curatorial Intern for the Medieval Art Department at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2020-2021), and the Chair the Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies (2022-2023). Prior to Cleveland, she worked as both a Curatorial Graduate Intern and a Curatorial Assistant in the Manuscripts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She co-authored the book Sacred Landscapes: Nature in Renaissance Manuscripts with Dr. Bryan Keene, to coincide with their exhibition of the same name (Getty Museum, 2017). She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2013).

Jillian Kruse is a fourth-year PhD student studying nineteenth-century European art with Professor Andrea Rager. Her research interests include late nineteenth-century collaborative and experimental printmaking, early photography, materiality and intermediality, history of collecting, global Impressionism, and ecocriticism. She holds Master’s degrees from the Université de Rennes II and Trinity College, Dublin. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow in Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she curated the exhibition We the People: American Prints from Between the World Wars. Jillian has also held positions at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the National Gallery of Ireland. She has publishedon the collecting craze for French posters in the 1890s in Art in Print, presented on the art of John Ruskin at the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association conference,and was awarded a Getty research grant for her work on the prints of Camille Pissarro. Jillian also currently serves as a curatorial intern in Prints and Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art and as the Assistant Bibliographer for the Print Council of America’s Oeuvre Catalogue project.

Benjamin Levy  is a PhD candidate specializing in the history of printmaking and photography. His research explores the materiality and meaning-making potential of process and technique, from 19th-century photomechanical technologies to contemporary artistic practice. His dissertation, “A Gray Area: The Technical and Aesthetic Development of the Photographic Halftone,” investigates the cultural and artistic significance of this process across historical and contemporary contexts. Levy has presented this research at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the 36th Congress of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art. His work has been supported by the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation and the Getty Paper Project. Levy has held curatorial positions at the John and Mildred Putnam Collection, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. He curated the 2022 exhibition “Photographs in Ink” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Levy is a member of the 2022 Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art cohort at the Harvard Art Museums and serves on the National Advisory Board for the Tamarind Institute. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Levy studied printmaking and photography, receiving training to be a collaborative printer.

Marina Mandrikova is a Ph.D. student studying Byzantine visual culture with Professor Elizabeth S. Bolman. Her research explores the images of the damned in Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and Slavic monumental painting, and the nature of their sins, crimes, and punishments. Marina is also passionate about the preservation of medieval art and architecture. She was a 2020-21 Graduate Student Fellow of the American Institute for Southeast European Studies and completed the ASCSA’s M. Alison Frantz Fellowship in Post-Classical Studies at the Gennadius Library in Athens, Greece, in 2022. Recently, Marina was awarded the Council of American Overseas Research Centers’ Multi-Country Research Fellowship and Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship for 2024-25.  She taught various undergraduate art history courses at Temple University, Philadelphia, and completed museum internships in Russia and Bulgaria. She co-organized two graduate student workshops for the Delaware Valley Medieval Association and presented papers at Byzantine and Medieval Studies conferences. Marina transferred to CWRU from Temple University, where she started her Ph.D. journey in the Department of Art History under the guidance of Doctor Bolman. Before that, she lived in Russia, where she earned her MA degrees in World Art History and International Relations from the St. Petersburg State University.

Susana Montanes-Lleras is a Ph.D. candidate working with professors Henry Adams and Andrea Rager on European and American art in the long 19 th century, with a focus on book illustration at the turn of the 20 th century. Her research interests include Victorian and Edwardian art, the trans-Atlantic influence of Pre-Raphaelitism, the history of the book, and text and image relations and intertextuality in book illustration. Susana earned her bachelor’s degree from Universidad de los Andes in her natal Bogotá, Colombia, where she majored in Languages and Sociocultural Studies and minored in Art. She also has an MA in World Heritage Studies from B-TU Cottbus, Germany, and a second MA, in Art History, from the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU). She has worked with several heritage preservation institutions, as an independent translator, as a Project Officer for the art department of the British Council, and as a curatorial intern at the Whitney Museum of Art. Last year she was a curatorial intern at the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Cleveland Museum of Art where she cataloged the museum’s collection of prints by Daumier and worked on an exhibition on literary illustrations at the CMA that will open in 2024.

Madeline Newquist is a third-year doctoral student studying with Professors Maggie Popkin and Elizabeth Bolman. Her research is currently focused on exploring cultural exchange and appropriation through the lens of early medieval Italian and Byzantine art. Madeline received dual bachelor of art degrees in Studio Art and History from Indiana University in 2018, and graduated again from IU with Masters in Arts Administration and Curatorial Studies in 2021. She has spent several years working with museums in southern Indiana, including the Mathers Museum of World Culture and the Eskenazi Museum of Art. Madeline has an avid interest in the practice of making art and continues to develop her own skills in the mediums of ceramics, drawing, and metalwork. In her free time, she enjoys writing, watching and critiquing films, and traveling as much as she can.

Clara Pinchbeck is a fourth-year doctoral candidate studying Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean art with Professor Elizabeth S. Bolman. She is interested in the material culture of Late Antique interior spaces, the transmission and trade of textiles and looms along the Silk Road(s), late Roman information technologies, and the application of digital methods to analyze early Eastern Byzantine histories. Her research primarily focuses on Late Antique Egyptian textiles and their roles within the religious, cultural, political, economic, and geographic networks of the Eastern Mediterranean. Pinchbeck has presented her work at the College Art Association Annual Conference, the Byzantine Studies of North America Conference, and the Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting. In Summers 2024 and 2023, she joined Professor Maggie Popkin as a part of a global, interdisciplinary archaeological project in Greece, where she was a team member on the American Excavations at Samothrace. Pinchbeck received her BA in Art History and Anthropology from Kenyon College in 2018 and her MA in Digital Art History from Duke University in 2020.

Claire Sumner is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying Early Modern Italy under Dr. Erin Benay. She received her MA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020 and her BA from Randolph College in 2015. Her work explores the technological developments in the creation of sculpture in Early Modern Italy, the materiality of clay, and the movement of information across territorial borders. In the 2023-2024 academic year, she was the curatorial intern in the Department of European Paintings and Sculpture 1500-1800 where she assisted in developing an exhibition on the painter Filippino Lippi. Claire has presented her research internationally, including at the 2023 conference Celebrations at Court: Ephemeral Objects, Materials, and Machineries in the Early Modern Period at the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark and will be part of a panel on the imagined landscapes of the Indies in the Global Baroque at the 2024 Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Toronto, Canada. She has been selected to participate in the Medici Archive Project Paleography Seminar in January 2025. She has previously worked at the Maier Museum of Art in Lynchburg, VA and the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, AK.

Arielle Suskin is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying Greek and Roman art and archaeology with Dr. Maggie Popkin. Her research focuses on how ancient artisans shaped public, private, and community identities through material culture with special interests in image replication, distribution, and coinage. She is the Research Lead for the Kelvin Smith Library Special Collections Roman Coin Collection. Arielle has presented multiple times at the Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting and in the fall, she will present at the 22nd International Congress on Ancient Bronzes. In the 2023-2024 academic year, she was the curatorial intern in the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has participated in the American Excavations Samothrace on-site and remotely for the past three years. She is a member of the 68th class of the American Numismatic Society Eric P. Newman Graduate Seminar in Numismatics and the 2022 SITSA cohort at the Harvard Art Museums. She holds an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU and a BA cum laude from Tulane University.

Rachel Sweeney is a first-year doctoral student studying medieval art and architecture with Professor Elina Gertsman. Her research interests focus on images from medieval Britain and Ireland, and include identity and the body, (dis)embodiment, the intersection of ritual and natural landscapes, and how the pagan past is carried into, characterized by, and remodeled in the later Middle Ages. She earned her MA in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she researched Celtic imagery depicting the human head. She also holds dual BA degrees in History and Art History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Recently, she has presented papers at the 2024 Celtic Studies Association of North America Conference and the 2024 Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North Conference.

Sam Truman is a PhD candidate studying medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman. Sam is currently in the process of writing her dissertation, which focuses on representations of ghosts in northern European manuscripts produced between approximately 1100 and 1500. Recently, she was awarded the Byzantine Studies Conference Graduate Student Paper prize for her paper, “‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’: The Execution of Judas Iscariot in Two Byzantine Marginal Psalters.” Sam has previously held internships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is currently serving as the 2023–2025 Samuel H. Kress Institutional Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Megan Alves is a second-year Art History MA student and Barbato Fellow with a passion for incorporating art history into community-based, socially engaged museum practices. She graduated from Oberlin College with Honors and BAs in Art History and Comparative Literature. Her interests include the study of modern and contemporary American and European art, particularly the depiction of the body and the representation of marginalized people. Alves is a seven-year veteran of the museum sector where she held a variety of positions including Collections Assistant and Marketing and Program Manager. In 2022, Alves served as Chief Curator for W/O Limits: Art, Chronic Illness, & Disability which received the Ohio Museum Association’s Best Exhibition and Best Community Partnership (Under $500,000) Awards.

Allison Boroff is a first-year Art History and Museum Studies student and a Keithley Fellow. She graduated from Florida State University (FSU) with a double major in Studio Art and Art History, and a Museum Studies minor. She is interested in late antique and medieval studies, and particularly in the interactions between people and venerated art objects. Allison presented her research paper on Byzantine micromosaics, “From Public to Private: Framing Icons to Change their Function,” at FSU’s 2023 Art History Undergraduate symposium. In the summer of 2024, Allison completed a hybrid museum and field internship excavating Etruscan, Roman, and medieval artifacts in Tuscany. This internship culminated in the opening of her co-curated exhibition in Florence, showcasing the artifacts and research of this excavation site.

Sydney Collins is a second-year masters student. Her research interests lie in Late Antique and Early Christian art and architecture. She holds a BA in art history and biology from Ohio State University. Sydney has presented her undergraduate research at SUNY New Paltz, interned at the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and currently works for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Last summer she attended an art conservation program through the Balkan Heritage Field School focusing on the late Roman Mosaics at Stobi. In her free time Sydney enjoys reading classic novels and painting.

Anna Farber is a first-year MA student and CMA Fellow pursuing a degree in medieval art history. She holds a BA from Oberlin College with high honors in art history for her thesis about Mary Magdalene’s relics and their effect on her role as a patron saint of the Angevin dynasty. She is interested in continuing to research relics through a disability studies lens. Her other research interests include medieval Jewish art, art as a tool in performance, and gaps and erasure in medieval art history. She has interned at the Met Cloisters, and worked at the Met Cloisters, Christie’s, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. 

Madalyn Fox is a first-year MA student in the Art History and Museum Studies program and a Barbato Fellow. A graduate of CWRU, she holds a BA with honors in Art History and Political Science. Her research interests lie primarily in public humanities and global contemporary art with a focus on identity, temporality, and ecocriticism. Her undergraduate honors thesis, “Ancestral Temporalities: Indigenous Futurism in the Art of Rose B. Simpson,” will be excerpted in Cleveland Art in July 2024. She also presented at the 2024 SUNY New Paltz Symposium. In summer 2024, she was the Nord Fellow in Museum Interpretation at the CMA, where she has served as the Stewardship Intern in the past.

Sarah Frisbie is a second-year MA student and Barbato Fellow studying late medieval art history, with an interest in objects that convey theology through materiality. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she holds a BFA in Art History and BA in Global Studies. Recently, she was awarded the Pancoast Memorial Fellowship for research travel to Lyon and the MAA/CARA Summer Scholarship to study Medieval Latin. In 2021, she presented her field research in La Rochelle on the medieval graffiti of the Palais des Papes, Avignon. She has interned at Sam Fogg, Saatchi Gallery, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. In her free time, she enjoys climbing, water polo, painting, and cooking for friends.

Lachelle Guardia de Diego is a first-year Art History MA student and Barbato Fellow studying with Professor Maggie Popkin. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan-Dearborn with a BA in Integrative Studies combining history, art history, and applied art. Her research seeks to interrogate dominant historical narratives and elucidate the lives of gladiators, charioteers, and other entertainers in Ancient Rome. She is also interested in the intersection of art, food, and imperialism from antiquity to the Renaissance, with emphases on the communication of exotic flavor profiles and on representations of culinary and viticultural labor. Lachelle is an independently published author of speculative fiction. In her free time, she enjoys writing, drawing, cooking, and studying Latin.

Darren Helton is a second-year Art History MA student and Barbato Fellow. He graduated summa cum laude from East Tennessee State University in Spring 2023 with BA degrees in Art History and History. He is interested in religious architecture, particularly from Late Classical and Early Medieval Byzantium, and how a space and the objects within it materialize the immaterial. He is also interested in how Christians navigated and adapted art of other religious cultures to their needs. Darren has spent time working in the collections of the Reece Museum, and he enjoys sketching and listening to music in his free time.

Sara Miller is a second-year Art History MA student and Cleveland Museum of Art fellow. She graduated cum laude with BA degrees in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her senior thesis explored the evolving role of the Etruscan psychopomp Vanth. Sara’s research interests include Etruscan, Greek, and Roman funerary assemblages, miniatures, and ritual space. She was recently awarded the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fellowship. This summer, she participated in the archaeological excavation at Samothrace. Sara is a Curatorial Intern at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Previously, she worked at the Glen Echo Art Gallery and the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture. In her free time, Sara writes fantasy stories using fountain pens.

Tara Smith is a first-year MA student in the Art History program. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Toledo with a BA in English Literature and Art History in 2023. Her senior undergraduate thesis earned the Dean’s Essay Prize for Long Prose and she completed a research internship with the Colnaghi Gallery in Madrid during Summer 2023. Tara is interested in modern and contemporary American art, as well as the art of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America—including their colonial relationship. Thematically, her research interests include gender, race, and the use of written word in visual art. A music lover, she enjoys playing violin and guitar in her free time.

Alexandru Zaharia is a first-year Art History MA student and Barbato Fellow. He is interested in the artistic influences of medieval and early modern commercial and cultural networks in the Eastern Mediterranean. He has worked with the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and has presented at several symposia. He received a BFA in Art History with Academic and Departmental Honors from MassArt, where he was a three-time Art History Excellence and Service Award recipient as well as an Honorary Faculty Member. Alexandru also holds a BS in Civil/Structural Engineering and has almost a decade of experience in that field. He enjoys photography and illustration in his spare time.