Summer Research Recap: Professor Jones in Cappadocia, Istanbul, and Washington, DC

Dr. Lynn Jones began her summer with 5 weeks of field work in Cappadocia for her current book project, Visions of Death and Resurrection in the Rock-Cut Churches of Cappadocia (under contract with Routledge). Her work was aided by an FSU Small Project Grant, and by seven students, including two recent Art History graduates. The group focussed on developing innovative, low-tech methods to document the interior fresco programs of inaccessible monuments, allowing for the identification of specific iconography in 18 rock-cut churches in three Cappadocian valleys.

She then spent a fruitful term as a Mellon Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of the Visual Arts (CASVA), in Washington, DC, writing on the topic of imperial canonization and Nikephoros II Phokas.

She interrupted her Fellowship to return to Turkey in mid-July to present an invited talk, “Visual Evidence for the Mutability of Identity in the Middle Byzantine Period” at the Fourth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium at Koç University, Istanbul.

Finally, Jones finished the summer at CASVA, collating field materials and writing. While there, she was thrilled to experience the blooming of the ‘corpse flower’ at the National Botanic Gardens–the famously fetid plant which only blooms once every eight years.

Dr. Jones will share further details at the Art History Research Forum on Sept. 21.