Notes on Contributors
Christopher A. Born
is Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Japanese at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. He earned his PhD in Japanese Language and Literature from Washington University in St. Louis after receiving a Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Tokyo. As his research interests lie with the intersection of politics, religion, and visual culture, his contribution to this volume is the continuation of a comparative, cross-disciplinary project regarding pilgrimage and sacred spaces in non-Western contexts begun with Gillian B. Elliott in 2018.
Nicole Corrigan
received her PhD in art history from Emory University and is now an independent scholar. Her work focuses on the cults of the saints of medieval Iberia, examining the impact of cultural influences from across the Mediterranean—including Islamic lands, Byzantium, and Western Europe—on devotional art in a wide array of media. This chapter is part of a larger project that examines Marian cult statues from medieval Iberia in the broader context of relic cults and interconfessional exchange.
Gillian B. Elliott
is Professorial Lecturer of Medieval Art at George Washington University. She earned her PhD in art history from the University of Austin in Texas and her work focuses on Romanesque sculpture of the Holy Roman Empire. Dr. Elliott’s articles in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte deal with Romanesque sculptural programs and papal-imperial politics in Alsace, France and in northern Italy. Her article, “Angels and Lombard Identity in the Romanesque Sculpture of San Michele Maggiore in Pavia,” will appear in an anthology of angelology edited by June-Ann Greeley (University of Wales Press, forthcoming 2022) and her book Sculpted Thresholds, and the Liturgy of Transformation in Medieval Lombardy (Routledge, forthcoming) will be published in 2022. This chapter on Civate derives from her participation in the 2014 NEH seminar “Reform and Renewal in Medieval Rome.”
Barbara Franzé
holds a doctorate in medieval art history from the University of Lausanne and is qualified to direct research at the University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (HDR). She currently teaches at the Universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel, while pursuing research into the art of the Gregorian reform, a subject on which she has already published some fifteen articles. A specialist in the monumental art of the 11th and 12th centuries, Dr. Franzé is committed to reexamining the exemplary monuments of the period: Saint-Chef-en-Dauphiné, Saint-Etienne d’Auxerre, Saint-Nicolas de Tavant, Moissac, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, and Oberzell on the island of Reichenau. She is particularly interested in the relationship between imagery and ecclesiastical space, and imagery as an expression of social issues. This chapter is a development of a study published in 2018 in the journal BUCEMA (online), dedicated to the sculpted decorations of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire.
Anne Heath
received her PhD from Brown University and is now the Howard R. and Margaret E. Sluyter Associate Professor of Art History at Hope College. Dr. Heath specializes in Gothic art and architecture and has a particular interest in the material presence of art objects, as well as the holistic sensory impact of medieval spaces. Her essays on the abbey church of Saint-Germain and the Cathedral of Auxerre have appeared in the journals Viator and Speculum. The essay in this volume is part of a larger project on the abbey of La Trinité in Vendôme and the cult of the Holy Tear.
Philip Jacks
is Professor of Art History at the George Washington University. He previously taught at Yale University and the University of Michigan. His fellowships include Fulbright-Hays, Samuel H. Kress (Bibliotheca Hertziana), and Dumbarton Oaks. He is also the recipient of the Bender Undergraduate Teaching Award at GWU. He is the author of The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of the Rome in Renaissance Thought (1993), The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family, with William Caferro (2001), and Gli Spinelli di Firenze: Mercadanti e Mecenati nel Rinascimento (2014). He is the editor of Vasari’s Florence: Artists & Literati at the Medicean Court (1999) and Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (2005). His current book projects focus on the history and practice of adaptive reuse: “To Make It a Grand Entrepôt”: The Story of Locust Point, Baltimore and The Afterlife of Classical Monuments.
Divya Kumar-Dumas
is a lecturer in Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She earned her PhD in South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (2021) and wrote a dissertation reconsidering sites in medieval South Asia as designed landscapes. Her research areas include art, architecture, and landscape, specifically the archaeology and cultural history of premodern Asia and relationships between South Asia and the world. She is a regional editor for the digital humanities project Gardens of the Roman Empire, and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University.
Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz
earned her PhD at the University of Berne and her Habilitation at Gutenberg University in Mainz. She served as Professor of Art History at the University of Zurich and as a research fellow at the Vitrocentre Romont. Since 1986, she has worked for the Swiss Corpus Vitrearum and authored two volumes of the Swiss CVMA Series (vol. 2: Königsfelden, and vol. 4: Berne Minster). Between 2004 and 2012, she was the President of the International Corpus Vitrearum organization. She has published primarily on medieval art and most recently coedited a comprehensive anthology on European stained glass with Elizabeth Pastan.
Ashley J. Laverock
is a professor of Art History at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. She received her PhD from Emory University. She specializes in hagiographic stained glass from the 13th century, the intersections of visual and textual hagiographies, and the cults of saints. She recently contributed a chapter entitled “Saints’ Lives and Stained Glass” to the anthology Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass (Brill 2019). She is currently preparing a book on the 13th-century stained-glass windows depicting St. Margaret of Antioch.
Elodie Leschot
earned her MA in Art History at the University of Lausanne and is currently finishing her PhD with joint enrollment between the University of Lausanne and Paris (1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). She has worked as a graduate assistant for the University of Lausanne since 2017. Her two main areas of research are Royal Iconography and Cluniac Studies in France in the 12th and 13th centuries. The present contribution stems from work in her second field and develops themes related to her master’s thesis.
Meghan Mattsson McGinnis
received an MA in Art History from the University of Louisville, focusing on late antique and early medieval art, and a masters in Archaeology from Stockholm University. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University, where she specializes in the archaeology of pre-Christian religions and magic and is working on a dissertation project exploring Vendel and Viking Age practices involving amulet rings. Her dissertation research, much like her contribution to this volume, stems from her ongoing interest in investigating the ritual life of this period.
Elizabeth Carson Pastan
earned her MA at Columbia University and her doctorate from Brown University. She is Professor of Art History at Emory University, where she teaches all aspects of medieval art, and serves as the President of the American Committee of the International Corpus Vitrearum. After she and Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz edited the anthology Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass (Brill, 2019), they saw an opportunity to work together again on a monument of mutual interest. For Pastan, it is part of a larger scholarly project on early rose windows. She has published several articles on the topic, including a study of the western rose of Saint-Denis.
Michael Sizer
received his PhD from the University of Minnesota and is now a historian on the faculty of the Department of Humanistic Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a specialist in pre-modern history, urban history, medieval France, the history of revolt, and the history of political culture, and is currently working on a book on popular politics in Paris in the late Middle Ages.
Kelly Thor
is Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Art Department at Washburn University in Topeka, KS. Since receiving her doctorate at the University of Louisville (KY), her initial interest in the sociopolitical function of medieval Iberian frontier churches has expanded into an investigation of the powerful topographies upon which they are frequently built. This project is one of several investigations into rural church sites that support the position that an enduring belief in earth magic contributed to their establishment and expansion during the turbulent period known as the Reconquest.
Susan Leibacher Ward
received her PhD in the History of Art at Brown University. She is Professor in the Theory/History of Art/Design Department at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a specialist in French Sculpture of the 12th century and was codirector of the New York/Pennsylvania volume of the Census of Gothic Sculpture in America. She wrote her doctoral dissertation about the South Portal of Le Mans Cathedral, the focus of this article, and has been returning to it in a variety of publications, including a forthcoming book.
Laura J. Whatley
is Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University at Montgomery. She completed her doctoral work at the University of Illinois under the supervision of Anne D. Hedeman. Her research broadly focuses on crusader identity and visual culture, with particular interest in England. She has edited volumes and published articles on crusader art, illuminated apocalypse manuscripts, the art of Matthew Paris, images and architectural evocations of Jerusalem in England, and seals, including the edited volume A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages with Brill in 2019. Most recently, she has published a series of commentaries on antiquarian engravings of medieval seals for the digital edition of Vetusta Monumenta, an NEH-funded digital humanities project at the University of Missouri.