Art History doctoral candidates Rachel Carlisle, Britt Boler Hunter, Sarah Mathiesen, and Caitlin Mims are contributing to a major Oral History Project for the International Center of Medieval Art, conducting interviews with scholars of medieval art and publishing them in a series of podcasts.

Congratulations to Dr. Rachel S. Fesperman, who earned her PhD in Art History from FSU in the spring of 2021 and accepted a faculty position at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, NC in August. Dr. Fesperman joins the Art Program in Pfeiffer’s Department of Humanities as an Art History Lecturer.

Join us on Tuesday, October 12 at 1 pm for a talk on creative access by Dr. Amanda Cachia, a curator, writer, and art historian who specializes in disability art activism and creative access in the art world. Her talk, "Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation," is sponsored by the Museum & Cultural Heritage Studies program.

Dr. Jones's research and publication activities in the past year include two articles, a co-edited volume of the medieval art & architecture journal Peregrinations, a conference, and an episode of the podcast Byzantium and Friends – all in addition to winning a University Award for Graduate Teaching.

Visiting Distinguished Professor Richard K. Emmerson was honored for the influence and depth of his scholarship in 2021 with a Festschrift by colleagues and former students. Tributes in Honor of Richard K. Emmerson: Crossing Medieval Disciplines was published in July 2021.

Katie McCampbell Hirsch was appointed Director of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston in early 2201, after serving five years as curator and director of the Institute’s strategic partnerships. Katie was previously an English teacher for the Walt Disney Company in Shanghai and a development officer for Spoleto Festival USA. She praises the preparation she received at FSU for working with the arts in three sectors: academia, commercial, and now the museum world.

In the summer of 2021, medieval manuscript facsimile publisher M. Moleiro printed The Picture-Book Life of St. John and the Apocalypse, a commentary edition authored by Professor Richard Emmerson and doctoral candidate Britt Boler Hunter with provenance researcher Peter Kidd. The commentary is the culmination of a project begun in 2018.

In the summer of 2021, MA student Emma Driggers interned with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Working with curator Jim Deutsch, she collected American pandemic folklore and commentary, participated in workshops and staff meetings, and worked with the Smithsonian library and archives system. This year, along with her cohort of 8 other MCHS graduate students, Emma continues her museum experience in a yearlong internship at The Ringling.

Professor Tenley Bick has an article related to her current book project forthcoming in the journal Word & Image. She also wrote the essay "Bochner's Italian Picture" in the catalog for the 2020–21 exhibition Bochner Boetti Fontana, curated by Mel Bochner for Magazzino Italian Art Foundation.

Congratulations to Art History doctoral candidate Emily Tuttle, who joins the faculty this fall at Limestone University as a full-time art history instructor and director of the newly opened Limestone University Art Gallery.

PhD students Caitlin Mims and Madison Gilmore-Duffey were among 12 graduate students selected from a slate of international applicants to participate in The Individual and Society in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, a 3-day workshop held virtually in the summer of 2021 at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard. Caitlin also received a student research grant from the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA).

Professor Paul Niell is serving a three-year term as chair of the Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize committee for the Association of Latin American Art (ALAA). He is also serving a three-year term as the Latin American art field editor for caa.reviews, published online continually by the College Art Association.

The graduate Art History Association is led this year by MA students Ivy Bealyer, Paris Gilstrap, and Sara Kuba. They will hold meetings this fall on the second Thursday of each month, and are hard at work planning in-person and remote community events and collaborations with the undergraduate organization and the new Connections mentorship program.

Sonia Dixon has accepted the William Sanders Scarborough Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for the fall of 2021. She will conduct research in Greece for her dissertation on the origin and meaning of the chi-rho symbol in the Late Antique and early Byzantine period.

FSU offers free and easy options for COVID-19 testing and vaccination, as well as a chance to score huge tuition discounts, dining cards, reserved parking spaces, sports events admissions, and gift cards by registering vaccination information.