Students and Alumni to Represent FSU at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo
The 54th annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, affectionately referred to as “Kalamazoo” for its host city, will be held May 9–12, 2019 at Western Michigan University. FSU Art History will be well represented this year by current and former doctoral students.
On Friday, May 10, doctoral candidate Lacy Gillette will present “The Monster Within: Death, Disease, and Demons in the Holkham Bible Picture Book,” a paper that developed out of professor Richard Emmerson‘s Medieval London seminar. This research relates to Lacy’s examination of the body as a site for creating social and spatial hierarchies in the history of the book.
The following morning, May 11, PhD student Sarah Mathiesen will present “Presence and Absence: the Liturgical Activation and Function of Sacred Space in Yılanı Kilise.” This presentation is the result of early dissertation research on the Yılanı Kilise, a rock-cut church in the Ilhara Valley of Cappadocia in Turkey. Sarah spent the summer of 2018 with her advising professor, Lynn Jones, and other graduate students and researchers documenting and photographing the fresco programs of several of the churches in Cappadocia.
One researcher on the Cappadocia team was alumnus Dr. Brad Hostetler (PhD ’16), visiting assistant professor of Art History at Kenyon College. On Friday, Hostetler will present “The Byzantine Signet Ring of John the Imperial Spatharios at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Alumna Dr. Jennifer M. Feltman (PhD ’11), assistant professor at the University of Alabama, will preside over the session Episcopal Things and Ecclesiastical Spaces I: Clerics and Codices: Bishops, Secular Clergy, and their Books on Friday morning. She will also participate in a panel discussion Saturday morning, Episcopal Things and Ecclesiastical Spaces III: Brevia on Bishops and the Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages, and will present “Don’t Be So Serious! And Other Lessons Learned from the Pseudo Society” alongside her former dissertation advisor, Professor Emerita Paula Gerson, who will deliver her paper, “The Virgin at Chartres,” in the panel Papers in Honor of Richard Ring.
FSU will also be represented by faculty and student medievalists from the English, Literature, History, and Music departments, including professors Charles Brewer, Jamie Fumo, David Johnson, and James Palmer. Such diverse representation of fields and topics reflects the longstanding legacy of FSU’s medieval studies programs.