Focus Areas

Medieval art and material culture; northern Renaissance art; book history; art and narrative; art and gender

Research Description

The decoration of medieval illuminated manuscript prayer books often reflects complex relationships between storytelling, devotional practice, and page design, and can be linked to the larger visual and material contexts in which the books were intended to be used. My research explores these relationships in 13th and 14th century books made for English patrons, particularly in the household and social orbit of Isabella of France, a 14th-century queen of England. These books incorporate lengthy visual narratives in a variety of formats, and include some of the most celebrated examples of English illumination, such as the Queen Mary Psalter (London), the Isabella Psalter (Munich), and the Tickhill Psalter (New York).

Teaching

My courses primarily address the art and architecture of Europe from the 6th through the 16th centuries. In addition to the broad survey from Paleolithic caves to contemporary media in our Introduction to Art History, I offer students a more focused exploration of illustrated books in Art of the Book and period surveys of medieval art and architecture and Renaissance art. Courses at the senior and graduate level explore various topics, including recent courses on global interactions in manuscripts held at the MU Library's Special Collections; visual narratives in pre-modern art; and theoretical approaches to northern Renaissance prints and paintings. Recent graduate seminars have addressed maps and diagrams in medieval art, symbol and illusion in northern Renaissance painting, the fragmentary and often revised survivals of pre-modern art and architecture, and other topics.

Courses Taught

• ARH_VS 1130: Introduction to Art History
• ARH_VS 2150: Art of the Book
• ARH_VS 3530: Medieval Art
• ARH_VS 3630: Northern Renaissance Art
• ARH_VS 4140W/7140: Visual Narratives
• ARH_VS 4160W/7160: Global Encounters in Art History
• ARH_VS 4530/7530: Romanesque Art and Architecture
• ARH_VS 4540/7540: Gothic Art and Architecture
• ARH_VS 4660/7660: Art and Ideas in the Northern Renaissance
• ARH_VS 8110: Introduction to Graduate Studies
• ARH_VS 8520: Seminar in Medieval Art

Selected Publications

• “Saint Thomas Becket, his Mother, and the Reception of the Queen Mary Psalter in the English Court," in Saint Thomas Becket in Medieval and Postmedieval Visual Culture, ed. Alyce Jordan and Kay Slocum (forthcoming, Boydell and Brewer).

• "Patronage and Heraldry in the Tickhill Psalter (New York, NYPL, MS Spencer 26),” Source: Notes in the History of Art 40/2 (Winter 2021): 71-80.

• "The Personal Geography of a Dowager Queen: Isabella of France and her Inventory" in Moving Women, Moving Objects (400-1500), ed. Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 205-27.
• “Psalter (Isabella Psalter)” in The Book of Beasts, ed. Beth Morrison (Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 2019), pp. 142-44.
• "What the Queen Saw: Imagery in the Household of Isabella of France" in The Elite Household in England, 1100 - 1550: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Chris Woolgar (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2018): 393-411 and plates.
• “Design, Devotion, and Durability in Gothic Prayer Books,” in Manuscripta Illuminata: Approaches to Understanding Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014): 87-107. 
• "Turning the Pages: Marginal Narratives and Devotional Practice in Gothic Prayerbooks," in Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. Sarah Blick and Laura Gelfand (Leiden: Brill, 2011): 75-122.
• "Queen Mary and her Psalter: a Gothic Manuscript in Tudor England," in Medieval Art and Architecture After the Middle Ages, ed. Alyce Jordan and Janet Marquardt (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009): 18-38.
•  “Devotional Art,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. Margaret Shaus et al. (New York: Routledge Press, 2006): 200-04.
• "Margaret Rickert (1888-1973):  Art Historian," in Women Medievalists in the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005): 285-94.
• "Isabelle of France and her Manuscripts, 1308-1358," in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan, The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003):  225-252 and Figures 10.1 - 10.7.
• "The Psalter of Isabelle of France, Queen of England:  Isabelle as the Audience" Word & Image 18 (2002):  1-27.
• The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2001) – winner of the American Philosophical Society’s Millennium Award