Overview
Please note that I am not seeking to admit any new PhD advisees for matriculation in fall '25.
With faculty appointments in History of Art and Classics, I study the cultures of the Mediterranean from antiquity to the present, with a particular focus on Byzantine art. My first book, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art, traced the reception of ancient astronomical imagery in the Byzantine, Frankish, and early Islamic states. It received the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association and the Karen Gould Prize in Art History from the Medieval Academy of America. My book-in-progress is about the Byzantine "Oracles of Leo" and their reception in early modern Europe. Here's a link to a talk that I gave about this project. I publish regularly on the history of scholarship and the city of Constantinople, and have edited multi-author volumes on Hagia Sophia, the history of Byzantine studies, the archaeology of neighborhoods, and antiquarianism.
My research has been supported by fellowships from CASVA, the DAAD, IAS Princeton, KHI Florence and the Society for the Humanities. At Cornell, I was Director of Graduate Studies first in Classics and then in History of Art. Outside Cornell, I have been President of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (2018-20), and I currently chair the Gennadius Library Program Committee for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2023-25).
Publications
Books:
Authored:
Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
Palmyra 1885: The Wolfe Expedition and the Photographs of John Henry Haynes (co-author, with Robert G. Ousterhout) (Istanbul: Cornucopia Books, 2016).
Edited:
Hagia Sophia in the Long Nineteenth Century (co-editor, with Emily Neumeier) Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024). (Read the introduction.)
Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography (co-editor, with Mirela Ivanova) (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023). (Read the introduction.)
Otros pasados: ontologías alternativas y el estudio de lo que ha sido (co-editor, with Felipe Rojas and Byron Ellsworth Hamann) (Bogotá: MUSA, 2022). (Read the introduction.)
The Byzantine Neighbourhood: Urban Space and Political Action (co-editor, with Fotini Kondyli) Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 31 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). (Read the introduction.)
Robert Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). (Read the introduction.)
Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison (co-editor, with Felipe Rojas) Joukowsky Institute Publication 8 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017). (Read the introduction.)
Selected essays:
On Byzantine art:
"Hagia Sophia: Church, Mosque, Museum," in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 - ). Article published November 20, 2024.
"Between Diagram and Image: On Yuval's Harp," in Jeffrey F. Hamburger, David J. Roxburgh, and Linda Safran, eds., The Diagram as Paradigm: Cross-Cultural Approaches (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022), 93-112.
"The Great Kosmos of All Armenia: On the Sarcophagus of Isaac," in Helen C. Evans, ed., Art and Religion in Medieval Armenia (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), 16-26.
"The Imperial Arts," in Ellen C. Schwartz, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 133-146.
"Images in Byzantine Thought and Practice, ca. 500-700," in Mike Humphreys, ed., A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 144-187.
"Oracular Images and the Limits of Political Knowledge in Byzantium," in Michael Grünbart, ed., Unterstützung bei herrscherlichem Entscheiden: Experten und ihr Wissen in transkultureller und komparativer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 22-39.
“Images Down Low,” in Sabine Feist, ed., Transforming Sacred Spaces: New Approaches to Byzantine Ecclesiastical Architecture from the Transitional Period (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2020), 161-87.
“The Prussian Tondo,” in Niccolò Zorzi, Albrecht Berger, and Lorenzo Lazzarini, eds., I tondi di Venezia e Dumbarton Oaks: Arte e ideologia imperiale tra Bisanzio e Venezia (Rome: Viella, 2019), 35-49.
"The Disappearing Imperial Statue: Toward a Social Approach," in Troels Myrup Kristensen and Lea Stirling, eds., The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Responses and Practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 290-309.
On the history of Constantinople:
"From the Mouth of Angels: Folkloric Hagia Sophia," in Emily Neumeier and Benjamin Anderson, eds, Hagia Sophia in the Long Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024), 125-147.
"Constantinople's Medieval Antiquarians of the Future," in Elizabeth Key Fowden, Suna Çağaptay, Edward Zychowicz-Coghill and Louise Blanke, eds., Cities as Palimpsests? Reponses to Antiquity in Eastern Mediterranean Urbanism (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2022), 125-140.
"The Oxeia: A Neighbourhood Biography," in Fotini Kondyli and Benjamin Anderson, eds., The Byzantine Neighbourhood: Urban Space and Political Action (Abindgon: Routledge, 2022), 155-173.
"Eros and the Army (Constantinople and Context)," in Peter D. De Staebler and Anne Hrychuk Kontokosta, eds., Roman Sculpture in Context (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2021), 241-257.
“The Forum of Theodosius: Labour and the Gods,” in Vasileios Marinis, Amy Papalexandrou, and Jordan Pickett, eds., Architecture and Visual Culture in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honor of Robert G. Ousterhout (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 3-17.
"Social Clustering in 5th-c. Constantinople: The Evidence of the Notitia," Journal of Roman Archaeology 29 (2016), 494-508.
"Public Clocks in Late Antique and Early Medieval Constantinople," Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 64 (2014), 23-32.
"Classified Knowledge: The Epistemology of Statuary in the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai," Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (2011), 1-19.
"Leo III and the Anemodoulion," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 104 (2011), 41-54.
On the history of scholarship:
"The Politics of Byzantine Studies: Between Nations and Empires" (co-author, with Mirela Ivanova), The English Historical Review 139 (2024), 1230-49.
"The Science of Talismans Today," History Compass 22 (2023).
"La Quimera de Vasari: ontologías del estilo," in Felipe Rojas, Byron Ellsworth Hamann, and Benjamin Anderson, eds., Otros pasados: ontologías alternativas y el estudio de lo que ha sido (Bogotá: MUSA, 2022), 283-306.
"The Uncanny Encounter," in Armin Bergmeier and Andrew Griebeler, eds., Time and Presence in Art: Moments of Encounter (200-1600 CE) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022), 159-174.
"Classical Ground: Robert Wood's Palmyra and Balbec," in Robert Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 1-22.
"The Defacement of the Parthenon Metopes," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017), 248-260.
"Forgetting Athens," in Benjamin Anderson and Felipe Rojas, eds., Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 184-209.
"'An Alternative Discourse': Local Interpreters of Antiquities in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Field Archaeology 40 (2015), 450-460.
In the news
- Twelve new Klarman Fellows to pursue innovative, timely research in A&S
- Wondering what to read in 2023? A&S faculty offer ideas
- Faculty research group addressing monuments, heritage
- New lecture series introduces research at ancient Sardis
- Professor wins art history book prize