Sonia Dixon
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Research Area: Eastern Medieval Mediterranean Art Advisor: Dr. Lynn Jones Sonia Dixon is a doctoral student and a Patricia Rose Teaching Fellow working with Lynn Jones. She studies visual culture and identity in Late Antiquity (3rd – 7th century) in the eastern Mediterranean. Sonia’s research interests include the transmission, appropriation, and adaptation of objects and iconographies across perceived cultural, ethnic, and religious “boundaries.” Her dissertation delves into the reception of the Chi-Rho (“Understanding the Chi-Rho: Context, Viewer and Placement in Late Antiquity”). Sonia received her BA in Art History in 2012 from Middle Tennessee State University, and completed her MA in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies at FSU in 2016. Before returning to FSU to pursue her doctorate in 2018, she conducted field research in Turkey, presented at the 20th New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies at New College of Florida in Sarasota, and presented a gallery lecture for the Ink, Silk and Gold exhibit at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. In 2017, she taught History of Western Art II and History of Non-Western Art at The Art Institute of Tampa. As a PhD student at FSU, Sonia taught in the Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences (IMS) B.S. Degree Program in the College of Medicine, was the Research Assistant to the Curator for the exhibition Identity in the Ottoman Empire at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts, presented at the 3rd Annual Symposium on Diversity & Inclusion in Research & Teaching Organization (DIRECTO) (2020) and presented her work at FSU’s Annual Art History Graduate Symposium (2021). She served as a member of the department’s Anti-Racism and Equity Committee (2020-2021). Sonia is the first cohort of the William Sanders Scarborough Fellow with the American School of Classics at Athens. She also serves as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve as a Heritage and Preservation Officer. Her publications include “Reexamining Syncretism in Late Antique Iconography of a Vault Mosaic,” in the 38th volume of the art history journal Athanor (forthcoming), and an essay contribution and catalogue entries for Ethiopian Art in the David P. Harris Collection, Department of Art History, Kenyon College: Cultural Heritage, Identity, and the Persistence of Form in Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture VIII/1 (forthcoming). |