Dr. Lynn Jones’s 2021 Research Activities Include Byzantine Podcast and Digital Publication
Art History Professor Lynn Jones shared her ongoing research on Byzantium this year online, in person, in print, and by podcast. She has an article coming out in the inaugural edition of the online journal Valonia, sponsored by Koç University: “Examining a ‘Standard:’ Depictions of Constantine and Helena in Middle Byzantine Cappadocia.” In this article, Jones examines 27 representations of Constantine and Helena in 26 Cappadocian rock-cut churches of the 8th-13th centuries. She demonstrates that few exhibit what has been accepted to be standard iconography, and suggests a new typology, based not on the form of the Cross, or the position of the figures, but on the ways in which the imperial pair interact with the Cross.
In February, Dr. Jones participated in the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies’ Virtual Teaching Day with the theme “Whose Byzantium? Identity, Ownership, and Legacy.” Her paper, “The Five Ws: Questioning Ownership in Byzantium,” used Hagia Sophia as a case study in the question of ownership.
She also has in press the article “The Imperial Cult in Middle Byzantine Art: Cappadocia and Constantinople” in the the edited volume Byzantine Anatolia: Space and Communities, Papers from the 5th International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Symposium, and co-edited a forthcoming volume of Peregrinations, an online journal of Medieval studies. This issue, co-edited with FSU alumnus Brad Hostetler, will be published in the spring of 2022 and includes four graduate student essays, four senior scholar essays, and the catalog of Kenyon College’s David P. Harris bequest of Ethiopian objects. Participants include include FSU Art History doctoral students Sarah Mathiesen, Caitlin Mims, Madison Gilmore-Duffey, and Sonia Dixon, and fellow Art History Professor Erika Loic.
In the summer of 2021 Dr. Jones was also a guest of the podcast Byzantium and Friends, hosted by Dr. Anthony Kaldellis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at Ohio State University. Jones’s talk was on Byzantine identity outside of Byzantium, focusing on a relic of the True Cross that was gifted to the 6th century Merovingian queen and nun, Radegund, from the Byzantine court.
This year Dr. Jones also received the Florida State University Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching. She joined Professors Kristin Dowell and Stephanie Leitch in gathering three out of 13 highly prestigious annual University awards in the spring.