About

PhD with distinction, Columbia University (2011)

MA, University of York (2004)

BA, Brown University (2003)

I am Associate Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My research is largely concerned with premodern notions of authorship and authority, media theory, book history, reproduction, and the aesthetics and material culture of politics. I maintain a strong interest in historiography and in particular how mediation, reproduction, and restoration shape the reception of objects over time: this concern extends into commentary I have written for both public and scholarly venues regarding the incursion of the sciences, machine learning, and artificial intelligence into the humanities and art history in particular.

My book, The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) presents the first major art historical study dedicated to the emergence of the Middle English literary canon as an illustrated corpus. It was awarded High Commendation for Exemplary Scholarship by the Historians of British Art and received subventions from the College Art Association, the International Center of Medieval Art, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

CURRENT RESEARCH

While continuing to publish on illuminated manuscripts of English literature, I am currently at work on two monographs: the first is devoted to the art and artifacts of political expression in England at the end of the Middle Ages. This project, Impressive Politics: Reproduction, Representation, and the Wars of the Roses, focuses on oft-overlooked, serially produced objects to argue for the critical role pre-print forms of reproduction played both in the political culture of and in changing ideas about representation in late medieval England. The second monograph, tentatively titled, Book History Is Not the History of the Book: Four Essays from Fifteenth-Century England, draws on over twenty years' experience examining the manuscripts and early printed books of this period, challenging the traditional, linear formulas that have structured the field of book history: from orality to literacy, from roll to codex, from manuscript to print, and from print to digital.

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

I have also written public scholarship for a number of venues including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Hyperallergic here and here, BitchMedia, and The Conversation. You can catch me discussing my current research on the National Humanities Center’s Discovery and Inspiration Podcast series here, or on BBC Radio 4, discussing the internet’s favorite medieval topic: marginalia. 

CONTACT

For my CV (which contains my contact information), please visit my page on academia. You can also find my contact information on my faculty page here.

AWARDS

I have received generous support from the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the British Academy, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Huntington Library, the Warburg Institute, CASVA at the National Gallery of Art, the Whiting Foundation, the Medieval Academy of America, the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the American Trust for the British Library, among others.

In 2019 I was awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching as well as a College Outstanding Teaching Award from UMass Amherst.