Art History Students and Faculty Contribute to Latest Issue of Peregrinations, Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture

Four Florida State University Art History graduate students this year had the unique opportunity to contribute to a guest-edited issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture. The 20th Anniversary Special Issue of Peregrinations is a catalog of Ethiopian objects in in the Blick-Harris Study Collection in the Department of Art History at Kenyon College. The objects were researched and published by FSU graduate students Sonia Dixon, Madison Gilmore-Duffey, Sarah Mathiesen, and Caitlin Mims; professors Lynn Jones and Erika Loic also contributed articles, as did FSU alumnus Dr. Brad Hostetler (PhD 2016), assistant professor of Art History at Kenyon. The volume was co-edited by Dr. Jones and Dr. Hostetler.

The thirty-six previously unpublished Ethiopian objects in the catalog include crosses, pectorals, icons, and parchment fragments. In September of 2020, Dr. Hostetler transported the objects to the FSU campus, allowing graduate students in Dr. Jones’s East of Byzantium seminar to conduct close hands-on research. The resulting essays address the material, condition, uses, and provenance of the objects and the persistence of form and function in Ethiopian art.  Also featured in this volume are essays by experts in the field on Ethiopian cultural heritage, Ethiopian textual tradition, and the ethical status of objects in US academic study collections.

The entire issue of Peregrinations 8.1 can be downloaded as a single PDF or in individual chapters. Printed copies will also be available soon in the Art & Design Library.