My research, teaching, and writing focus on Premodern Europe and the Mediterranean within a global context, especially rooted in questions of gender studies, spatiality, and materiality. These themes can provide the tools and the energy to build commonalities and celebrate diversities in society. In the broadest sense my scholarship examines the means by which artistic creation, patronage, collection, and exchange make women’s lives visible, as revealed through close study of the objects and materials that were created by and for them within the larger socio-political context.
While much of my research has been centered in Europe, the elite women about whom I have primarily written come from both local and distant lands as part of the political marriage market, and the objects and materials they import and consume often come from greater distances still.
My definition of material culture is widely writ and I offer my audience multiple avenues to examine past cultures and periods in the forms of precious jewels, carved ivory, wood, and stone, the painted page and wall, the woven textile, fired ceramic and glass, and cast metalwork. I approach these objects spatially to include both the exterior and interior spaces framing them as well as the ritual and journeys that often joined them together. I bring my research interests in cross-cultural interaction directly into my writing and teaching, drawing on time-tested as well as innovative sources and always forging links between these eras of the past and how they impact and are relevant to current events, the larger public, and our community.
In addition to a deep love of premodern material culture from around the globe, I am interested in how the digital can aid us in forging connections between its diverse cultures as well as with us in the present day.
Therefore I increasingly look to how digital art history, museum curation, and cultural heritage can visualize the past in ways which enhance our ability to study and see its many facets. Tools that I use to enhance my own, my students, and the larger public’s research and questions include:
mapping and database creation,
photogrammetry and 3D photography,
virtual exhibitions built with game engines to create alternate display spaces and immersive experiences,
and applying augmented reality to object contextualization and analysis in museums and other cultural institutions.
I have held positions at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Richmond where I was an NEH Visiting Associate Professor, and Sweet Briar College, where I originally received tenure and returned to in the fall of 2021 as Associate Professor and Director of Faculty Development.